Sketching for May/June '13

I've not been terribly good at keeping up on the blogging of late have I (and long term followers will know this is nothing particularly new)? To be honest I've not been terribly great at keeping up on the art either. That's not to say I'm not doing any, but a good chunk of it is for work, so you'll either never get to see it or you won't for a few years. The work stuff is a big learning curve right now, and as a result it's having a knock on to the art-as-hobby area. In all honesty this last week I might have gotten back on the horse properly, but Saints Row IV was out and I was too busy playing to actually draw anything (I did work on it of course, but even so there were plenty of surprises in there I'd somehow missed during development, and I had a blast). Plus it's right in the middle of allergy season, and I hate drawing when everything is slightly blurred from the results.

So yes, the art and the blog have not been my priority of late (there have been other things going on too, but I won't bore you with them), but now SR4 is done and dusted and there's less pure knowledge being assimilated at work I should be getting back to it. But not this week - I have a deadline of sorts this week.

Anyway! Sketching.

Sketching For April '13

So first of all there was supposed to be a retrospective this week, celebrating 3 years of the blog.  No, that's not a long time compared to some, but for me it's a very long time indeed. Unfortunately the hard-drive with all the images for it, as well as some for my next post on optical illusions, died.  There was more on it than that of course (a terrible speed paint and vast tracts of my reference material - most of my art was backed up though), but those are the two that most have an effect on this blog.  So I still plan on doing both the Retrospective, and the other A Musing post, but that'll have to wait until I get my act together again.  I'm not sure why the drive died, but it's probably because of a static spark or getting jostled wrong when I was trying to transfer it over to my new PC.  Yes, I finally got myself a new PC; built it myself in fact. Other than a handful of small issues (and the large one regarding the drive) it's been a relatively smooth transition.  Far smoother than I thought it would be at least.

So other than ll that this has been a good moth for sketching, even though there are only two images in this post.  I filled about 10 pages in the last three weeks of April, which is rather more than I have been achieving.  None of it is directly from reference (although much of it is inspired by photos and the like, but not drawn until much later), and some of it I'm quite pleased with.  You'll note the lack of an image woth the worse sketches of the month - that's because while there were some hideous ones they were all ones that were mostly rushed.  Those below are ones I either spent a little time on or that turned out well despite being done very quickly.  OK, on to the images.

January '13 and (December '12) Sketching

They say it never rains but it pours. I don't know who 'they' are, but they've been saying it for an awfully long time. Right now, with the rain streaming down the windows this seems a particularly apt term, as I do seem to have rather a lot to be getting on with after a month of relative artistic calm. Much of this comes from work, and so you may never see it dealt with here (though it's not out of the question eventually), but some of it I'll be dealing with here eventually. Eventually is an important word there, as I won't have much time to update the blog or do side work to show for a little while, so if this is the only post during February I hope you'll forgive me. But you're not here to hear me bemoan my work load, you're here to see art (come to the wrong place I suspect), so lets get on with it.

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 July

Life's funny, full of little jokes. After my last post saying I wouldn't be taking any commissions for a while I remembered I'd already told someone I would do one for them. So I had to do that one obviously. That's done, and there should be a post about it this coming weekend. So with that out of the way I renewed my vow, and then had an offer I couldn't refuse, so I'm probably doing another. You won't hear more about that one for a while, but really I quite literally could not refuse it without kicking myself later.

So with all that going on, as well as other things (New kittens in the house, son being sad because his best friend's moved to Canada, wife starting college in a week etc) I've barely done any sketching so far this month. Luckily last month I was a mite more productive...

The Best and Worst Sketching of May and June

This one's rather late in coming, and for that I apologize (you're used to it by now I'm sure).

Since I last posted I've had another virus infect my machine, I've upgraded windows and re-installed twice (partly due to the virus), gone deaf in one ear due to allergies (which cleared up - but now it's happened to the other ear) and discovered my scanner no longer works (Windows 7 incompatible, there's nothing actually wrong with the scanner itself). There was probably some other stuff in there too, but if I don't remember it it's probably not important.

Thankfully I had the good sense to scan sketches before that first re-install, so I do in fact have something to show today.

Grave Yard Haunt

There is a saying, allegedly of Chinese origin, that goes "May you live in interesting times." It's thought to be a curse rather than a blessing. I've had an interesting month.
Nobody has died (yet), or ended up in hospital (well, once, briefly), or lost their job (That I know personally), or have gotten a divorce (thus far) but a great many things have occurred to lower my priority on updating the blog. I can't go into all of them, so I won't go into any of them, but this is the reason I've not updated the blog so far this month, and why I've barely sketched at all recently.
That said, I have painted a second commission and I'm working on a third - This entry covers the second. It's not a particularly mature subject, but you should be warned that zombies walk below.

The Best and Worst Sketching of March and April

So this post took longer than planned, but it's taken me two weeks to work through all the sketches I did in the previous two months. As usual I had vastly underestimated the number of sketches I'd managed to do in that time.
April had very few sketches of course, which you could have guessed since I was away for a good chunk of it, and what I did while I was away was covered in the previous post, but March had far more than I expected. I could have posted something else I suppose, but in all honesty I had nothing else of interest. I have some stuff in the works, but I wasn't (and I'm still not) in a position to write them up yet, and while it was the blog's 2nd birthday the other day I was too busy to do anything for it - maybe the next post will be a belated birthday post.
But for now, to the sketches...

The Best and Worst Sketching of January

I shouldn't be posting today really, I'm off work sick, so by rights I should be lying on the couch with a book and groaning a lot. Unfortunately my Son has a friend over to play and he's terrified of me. I mean really scared, like run screaming from the room whenever I show my face scared.

This is odd as I've never been anything but nice to him, so I'm forced to conclude that his parents have told him that the bogeyman is a 6'4" Welshman with a deep voice and a gut and he's made the connection.
So I'm banished to the office until he goes home.

But enough about me, and more about the sketches...

The Best and Worst Sketching of December

Oh, all right, I'll bring back the bad sketches!  No, nobody has actually asked me to bring them back; nobody ever posts any comments remember? You're allowed to if you want to though, I don't bite. Well, my blog doesn't at least...  And yes someone did comment on the last post, but I'm married to her so it doesn't count ;).  Anyway, I just felt guilty for not showing them.  One of the things I decided way back when I started the blog was that I would show a good sampling of everything I did, good and bad, so I'm letting myself down.  You probably don't care, probably see them and say "Why'd he post that? It looks like I spider sneezed on the page and then died!"  before moving on.  Really I have no idea why anyone would read the blog that by it's very concept is admitting it's full of dreadful pictures, but you do, and I'm happy for that.  And since you do read it (presumably) and look at the pictures (hopefully) I'd better post something for you to look at.

The Best (Not Worst) Sketching of November

Merry Christmas! Yeah, so it's a day late - well, I'm not going to actually post on Christmas day am I? So it's a day late, whatever, Boxing Day still counts*. Some of you probably don't even celebrate Christmas, and that's fine too I hope you have (or had) a wonderful whatever you observe this holiday season. I do observe it though, so as an added bonus for what would otherwise be a very short post I'll throw in a speed paint I finished at 11:50PM on Christmas Eve.

The Best (Not Worst) Sketching of October

I think by this point we've all acknowledged that I can be pretty tardy when it comes to updating the blog, especially when there are other shiny things I could be looking at/reading/playing/watching etc.  This was definitely the case last month as you'll note the new record low of 1 solitary post.  Bah.  If October felt like an eternity then November offset it by going in a flash.
"Oh look, it's Guy Fawks Nigh*VOOF*t...  I mean Thanksgiving."
Partly this was down to the excitement of having shipped another game, and it being reviewed very well, and also being really really fun to play.  Yes, I've played rather a lot of Saints Row: The Third recently.  I only spent six months of so working on it, but it's hard to miss what I did.
Pretty much every ship in the game is something I built, as are a couple of vehicles. They all got touched by other people after I was done (and quite a few people when I was still making them, for technical aid and so on), but they're still enough of mine that I can point and say "I made that ship!".  Anyway, enough excuses and prattling, I'm a month behind, we stuff to catch up on...

A Conglomeration of Ineptly Placed Lines

I've been putting of writing this post for far to long. I would blame the rather excellent new Deus Ex game, but that's rather like patting my large Budai like stomach and saying "but it was entirely the fault of the pastry chef!" Clearly the truth is I'm just a lazy schlub. The odd thing is that despite my putting it off I've had the post "prepped" for a while, and prepping is by far the most time consuming thing about making one of these posts. It's not like the writing has any time spent on it (as I'm sure you'll have noticed). Well, let's go and see what all that preparation has to show for itself (and more on what goes into it a little later).

Getting Past its Use By Date

I'm such a slacker. The deadline I thought would hold up the next post (now the current one) was on Saturday, and here I am not having posted yet. Tsk. Worse still, I have some more things to post before I head off on a three week trip starting next week, so I should probably pull my thumb out, yes?

This one's going to be short, and sweet, and a bit dull.

Midweek Madsanity

It's not usual for me to post on a Tuesday, but it just so happens that tonight I came home at a reasonable time, had a Son that went straight to sleep at bed time, had practically nothing to watch on TV (watched one shortish show), and I don't fancy playing a game. This means it's not even 9PM and I find myself in front of my PC. I can't remember the last time that happened when it wasn't a weekend!

With all those stars aligning you'd expect I'd have something fantastic to show right? Sorry, out of luck today - Just some sketches from the last few weeks. I actually prepped these over the weekend (scanned, laid out uploaded etc.), but didn't get time to write the related post, so here it is.

If You Can't Draw Just Scribble

ScribblerToo is one of those web based doodling programs. It's not unique in this regard, there are rather a lot of them around. Usually the process will go something like this: Friend links to sketch program, I take a look, sketch something dreadful, decide I'd rather be doing it using something else (such as a pencil, or Artrage, or my elbow dunked in poo - which would still be preferable to some of these packages), close webpage, forget all about it.
ScribblerToo has a hook though - it does something that I'm not sure I can do in any other package. The best way to describe it is as "Painting with Cobwebs". Every time you draw a line it works out how close it is to another line you've already drawn, the closer the line the more likely it will be that it forms a "web" connection to it. The easiest way to understand is to try it yourself - Don't fret if you can't draw because it works just as well on abstract stuff. It's called ScribblerToo for a reason y'know? Well, two reasons, I'll get to the other in a moment.

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.

Odds and Sods

The end of the month is rapidly approaching, as is the end of the year, and the end of the decade.  Madness.  So, before this year becomes next year I though I ought to do a final catchup post in 2010 so I enter 2011 with a fresh slate as it were.  Some of these have been floating around since November, a couple I drew just yesterday, but they're all things I had meant to post and either couldn't find the time to post them, or weren't worth a post of their own.  There's some good stuff within, but also some stuff that'll make you wonder why I bother (Made me wonder, I can tell you).  This might be a long one, so you might want to go to the loo while you can... All done?  Good, on with the show then:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Like a man with blog constipation I'm not very regular.  Still, we shall see what nuggets I can produce over the next few days.  Okay, enough with the dire analogies (I just can't help myself), it's time for a post.

This one's just tying up some loose ends from last month (The next one does the same for this month).  It's a good, bad and ugly collection of sketches you'll find below - I wish I could hope it was worth the wait, but A) you ain't been waiting, and B) it won't be...