Skull Skills Unplugged

So here I am again with more skulls, the last pure skulls for a while I feel, although I might draw the occasional one just to keep in some kind of practice.  Next up, more skulls, sort of.  Skulls with muscle on them in fact, and perhaps some figure drawing practice since I'm already rather rusty; but that's for the future. Right now we have the last lot of skulls I did, but this time without referring to anything while I drew them.  After each skull I went and looked at my anatomy books, or at a photograph to see where I went wrong, hoping to improve the next time.  I did, but I'm not going to lie, even on the best of the following the anatomy and proportions are decidedly dodgy.

Artrage Against the Machine

Yesterday, on the recommendations of several people going back quite some time, I downloaded Artrage, a "natural media" art package for the computer.  Getting used to it could take some time as its user interface is quite different to that of Photoshop, my usual package of choice.  No, I know what you're thinking ("Hey, I need some chips!") but I don't consider this either against my goal of getting better at illustration without relying on the computer, or the topic of this blog, which has much the same focus.  Really the idea is to get better at art in general, not just in real media, but I believe that getting better using real media is a huge part of that. So anyway, Artrage...

Skull Skills

So I've been meaning to write this post for a few days now, and somehow I keep not managing to do it, but at least this time I'm making a start; only time will tell if I make it to the end in one go.  I've not managed to get all that much practice in over the last two weeks due to having guests, being busy at work and being generally lazy at home.  I did get some done however, and what follows in this post is part of it.  You may recall in the last post I said I was going to practice drawing skulls.  I wasn't kidding.

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?

Sketching Skaters

I've been falling greatly behind on my sketch practice of late, and haven't done any for probably two weeks.  This isn't to say I've not been doing art type stuff, just no sketching.  I should probably get back on it huh?  The art type stuff I've been doing I can't show until August, even when it's finished, which it isn't yet. It's digital, although I did do a prep sketch before I started, so that's something.  Before my sketching hiatus I bought Skate 3 (one of those new fangled video games). It has an in-game editor for editing videos and taking photographs, letting you move the camera around and capture just the shot you want.  Handy for sketching!  So I tried it.

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.

Facing the Worst

A couple of posts ago I said I was too sick to draw anything.  This was true (at least I was too sick to draw anything and enjoy doing it), and to a degree it still is, but I've managed to get together the motivation to do a few small things.  One of those things was to pick an image that I not only would like to draw, but that I would like to draw on an occasional basis, and use it as a measure of my progression.  I picked an image, gave myself an hour to draw it, and set to work.

A Musing

A couple of posts ago I pondered why the small thumbnail I had at the top of the post looked human at all, given that it was just a series of sketched lines (I've included it again for good measure).  I stated that it was now possible to tell that the figure was in her birthday suit, and that this might offend people. So the question remains, why does it look human at all?  How can a series of black lines with minimal light and shade represent so definitively a female form?

The Best and Worst of Figure Drawing (Week 8)

And now, the end is near (and so I face the final curtain)...  Yup, the last week of figure drawing, bringing me, more or less, up to date.  OK, so it was a week ago last Friday, but I've been too sick to draw much since then, so there's not much else to cover until I do.  That said, I do have some ideas for a couple of posts to tide me over while I draw something else for your attention.