Belated Sketching for September

It's been a while hasn't it? I skipped the first whole month since the blog began (actually closer to two months at this point if I'm honest), and I've not done much art in order to say "Well yeah, but check this out!" either. You may be thinking I've been resting on my laurels after that book cover, or that I've just been slacking. Those in the second group would be closer to the truth; I've totally been slacking, but not without reason.

Some of you already know that the beginning of October (and the end of September) is a particularly hard emotional time for me, and this year saw an anniversary that made it especially so. Before I could get over that little funk there was another emotionally trying time (Mostly for my wife, but obviously what effects her rubs off on me to some extent), and then my Son was sick, and then my wife was sick, and now I'm sick - but it's now more irritating than "feel like death", hence my finally writing a post.

So the emotional stuff basically nuked my inspiration and drive so I did very little for the month. I did enough to get some more posts, but no speedpaints and not much sketching. There goes my one speedpaint a week intent - I'll get back on it soon. Anyway, before all this I did scan in September's sketching, so I have that to show at least...

Sketching for August (and the OAG)

Well, yeah. So I haven't been posting much in the past few months as you may have noticed. This isn't because I don't like posting (although prepping these sketch posts can be a real drag), more it's with me just not having much to post.

August was an especially dry month, it seemed to go by extremely quickly and I didn't do much in the way of sketching; I thought - Turned out I did more than I expected, just not the usual stuff, but more on that in a minute. I had promised another post last month, but in the end I felt that the contents of that were better blended with my regular sketch posts - the aims are similar even though the results are less exciting.

You'll notice some changes this time around - they may stay, they may not. Only time will tell. Oh, The ORG? Read on MacDuff!

The Best and Worst Sketching of August

Sometimes nothing goes according to plan. Take this last weekend for example. It was a long weekend, so plenty of time to do plenty of things, right? Wrong.
I had plans. I planned to speak to a friend in the UK, paint a couple of speed paints, paint with some real paint, finish the book I was reading, play video games and some traditional games with my son, make burgers on the grill/barbecue, go for pizza as a treat for the kid and so on. Almost none of this came to pass. It wasn't that anything major went wrong, but a few little things did, like my Son had a tantrum and injured my thumb with an unintentionally well aimed kick, reducing my gaming time (it hurt) and sketching/painting time (it hurt) and so on. It wasn't a bad weekend, just unproductive. I did get everything setup for a blog post though, but it hurt too much to type for long, so here it is today.

Sketchy Von Sketcherson

I've been putting off updating the past few weeks because I didn't feel I had enough to warrant a post. Eventually, yesterday, I thought I should probably just gather what I could so it didn't look like I'd gone to Bermuda and been lost in the Triangle. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a huge amount of stuff to post. Well, alright, not huge, but far more than I've happily posted alone in the past.

A further surprise was discovering that very little of it was all out bad - this is funny because while drawing it I thought most of it was dreadful, and bemoaned losing my mojo to sickness. Perhaps I just lost my perspective... Or perhaps I've lost it now because I'm sick, again (I know, this winter's been crazy for teh sikcies). Either way, there's no good or bad this time, just "Not so bad" and "Not so good".  I'll start with some portrait sketches.

Cold in the Lazy Bones

By my reckoning it has been about three weeks since I posted anything. This isn't very good at all. In my pathetic defense there was a week in there where the entire household got sick, but this is sort of offset by much of my time being taken up with playing video games. Fallout: New Vegas and Little Big Planet 2 are both sink-holes for time, and it's easy to lose track until you realise it's too late to do what you actually mean to do, such as draw, or update the blog.  All that still leaves a week unaccounted for... perhaps I dropped it down the back of the couch...

As a result I've not only not posted, but I haven't done much in the way or art either. Oh, I've done a little sketching, which I'll cover here, and I've done two ArtRage paintings that I'll cover shortly, and some speed paints, but not a lot in comparison to previous months, and very little in the way of actually improving. I really need to get on with it or I'll never be any good. Anyway, on to the feeble number of sketches done this month.

Slacker Random Pose Drawing

Well, I am a slacker.  It's been almost two weeks since my last post, which is silly since I've had the images for three available for almost a week.  Not just sitting there doing nothing, but scanned/saved and uploaded all ready to go.  I've been a little busier than usual at work for those two weeks, but that's a fairly feeble excuse since writing these posts doesn't take all that long, especially in comparison to the time taken to prep the images for them.  Still here we are with the first of three rapid posts.  Expect some brevity, or perhaps you wish for it...

Head for the Hills

So I finished that little project I was working on about a week ago.  It was an illustration for my Brother's birthday card, which is why I can't post it yet (On the off chance he decides to read the blog between now and August), but I shall once he has the card in his hands, along with step by step descriptions and illustrations.  It was primarily digital I'm afraid, but it's still the first piece of finished art I've done in a while.  So that was a week ago, and I'd done no other off-work art between the last post and that, so what have I done since?

Facing the Facts

I've not been practicing anywhere near as much as I should have over the past few weeks.  Those figures you saw in the last post?  Between the good and the bad that was about 80% of what I'd drawn, barring what now constitutes this post and the next.  That's just not really enough.  Yeah, I could come up with excuses (I was sick, I was working late, my son was being a pooper; all true BTW), but at the end of the day how hard is it to pick up a pen or pencil and draw something?  Right.

Random Pose Sketches #3 (May 2010)

I just realised that I opened two consecutive posts with "A couple of posts ago."  I realised this mostly because I was about to start this one the same way, and thought I may have done so before.  Clearly my head would currently be in the shed if I happened to own one.  Not in a drunk way, just in a way too much on my mind way.  Still, even with so much going on right now I managed to get some sketching done (and it's not that much if I'm honest, just a few high stress not that muches).  So it's time for a look at how much I suck rock.

Random Pose Sketches #2 (April/May 2010)

This is the point where I have to wonder if this blog should go forward without some sort of warning on it.  For the first time I have images that are recognisable as humans with their kit off.  Now for me this isn't a big deal, you can see nude art pretty much anywhere (Statuary!) and (with some exceptions) I'm fine with even my Son seeing such things.
Other people are not so open minded regarding this sort of thing and may feel my feeble scribble of a boob and nipple is somehow going to convert their child, or even themselves, into a crazed deviant.

Random Pose Sketches #1 (April 2010)

So week 4 of figure drawing didn't go so well, and I got home from that sorta depressed.  Cake and ice cream weren't helping, so I decided to try some hair of the dog that bit me.  No, not alcohol, more drawing!
One of my co-workers who also does the figure drawing thing (and just happens to be my boss) put me on to the awesome posemaniacs back during week 1 of the figure drawing, and this finally felt like the time to try it out.
These are the first couple of weeks worth of the results.  As usual, divided into the best and the worst (in my opinion).  No commentary today though, I think they speak for themselves.