October

Hey September

Things have been real busy-like for me recently, and when things are busy I don't draw much at all.  It's both good and bad.

Had a bit of fun fiddling around with some colour in this one.

These doodles were done in a neat program called Alchemy.

Some gestures to keep me drawing.  Getting into more consciously using the box and cylinder, lines are kind of dark and messy.  The other is... something, just messing about.

Listening to some music from the Bastion soundtrack here, quite liking it.

Still July..

I'm trying to give myself a better understanding of the building blocks (no pun intended) of drawing.  For now, I'm going to try to focus more on gesture and the basic tools of drawing (box, sphere, cylinder and cone), rather than continuing with the anatomy stuff.  The box is really handy!  It's useful for determining orientation, relative placement and basic proportions of objects (and more things too, I'm sure).  

So much for June!

Sorry for the hiatus!  June was a somewhat busier than usual month for me, here are some suitably sketchy doodles.

Doodlin'

Read an interview with an artist named Elsa Chang (found here: http://elsa-chang-interview.blogspot.com/)

And here's her blog: http://elsasketch.blogspot.com/ I like the shapes she uses, especially in her animal drawings, very eye pleasing.

Watching a talk by Leonard Susskind, thought his head had an interesting shape (check out those ears!).
Maybe that's a weird thing to say...
http://www.ted.com/talks/leonard_susskind_my_friend_richard_feynman.html

Fiddling around with a textured brush, I like how it feels.

Second time I doodled this, PS crashed on me the first time before I'd saved, so I re-did it.

Was doodling an idea I had after watching a short video on pollination http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_the_hidden_beauty_of_pollination.html (some really neat footage here!)

I'm not a big dragon guy, but the idea was that of dragon's as pollinators of a specific flower.  A co-evolution situation where the flower is a very hardy and dangerous plant, but the scales on the beast allow it to safely move about it.

Hurray for more necks! (Something's off about the left eye area..)
Rediscovered Rick Berry today. http://www.rickberrystudio.com/galleries/gallery_update_1.html
I remember seeing his stuff before, but stumbled across him again today.  I love his style a lot!

Neckin'

Watched a video on the neck, these doodles aren't that great.  It was nice and handy to learn about various parts of the neck and how they fit together.  Mainly cylindrical-based shapes.  I didn't know the hyoid bone existed until today!

I didn't bother to post this one earlier, I didn't take this any further.  I kind of like the thumbnail view of it, but not the enlarged version.

Something a little different, maybe.

Perhaps more later.  Just getting a first attempt at this idea down, a flower where the stamen is like a light bulb filament; a bio-luminescent flower for an imaginary environment without much light.

Some doodling before bed.

Some gestures.  That is all.

Some aimless doodling.  I don't know what it is right now, but I've been feeling rather drawing impotent lately.  When I try to get started things don't feel right...

Some Silhouettes

Robot-y silhouettes.  Just finished Portal 2 today.
Often enough, when I start drawing I feel like I need re-learn how to draw, I don't know if that's just part of warming up or not.

Still need to pick something to do the multiple angle drawings of.

Mess

I think I need to be less afraid of buggering things up, and just start throwing value around sometimes, it's fun!

Was looking at Andrew Jones' site a bit.  http://www.androidjones.com/ 
So chaotic and full of shapes and colour, I like it.  He did concept art for Metroid Prime, which is awesome, it's one of my favourite-est games.

Today is one of those days where the stylus feels really weird in my grip, I can't seem to hold it comfortably, kind of annoying.

I was pondering some of the environmental elements I want surrounding this character.  Right now I'm thinking an emphasis on larger-than-life plant life, taking some design elements from non-plant things.  The bottom right is a quick attempt at playing with value to create the effect of something giving off light.

Just a little bit

A little bit of doodling to keep me going.  I'm really enjoying having a job to go to, but I need to get to sleep earlier.

Busy tonight..

Went out for a friend's birthday this evening, so nothing new, gotta get to bed now.  This dude, Crazy Bear, is from July 2010.  Illustrated from an old photo of him, it was for a project, but wasn't used.  Something about this makes me think of multiple, flat images, layered in front or behind one another, not like a whole person.  The hair looks weird.

Some Doodles

A couple of doodles and a simple key-chain design I was asked to do.  You can't see the outer border of the key-chain because it's white and for some reason the transparency of the png isn't recognized, the outer border follows the same shape as the black shape.

Temp Job FTW

I got nothing!  Here's something from October 2010.
I start a bit of work tomorrow morning, for two weeks.  In a law firm.  In the mail room...

Rain and Snow Today

Title has nothing to do with the content.  Again, nothing exciting.  Chilling back home in the country this weekend.  Some gesture poses on the right, and a bored doodle on the left.  Kind of like the head, the rest not so much.  I notice with my gestures that my proportions are wonky, would like to correct that.. how.. better observation?

Here's something from October 2010.  I suppose that's not all that long ago.. around half a year.

Moar Gesture!

Another page of 1 minute poses.  Sorry it's not something more interesting :p.  I enjoy these, they're fun to try.  I went over a bunch after I was done, adding extra value.  Don't know if I'll be posting something saturday night, we'll see.

Love this stuff: http://www.artbyfeng.com/index.html

More Head Stuff

Another tutorial night.  It focused on muscles that affect the lips, the mouth area and looked at the ears a bit too.

The way of defining the beginnings of a face with a 'T' shape was used by Michaelangelo (or so the man in the video tells me..), where the horizontal defines the brow (not the eye center, like I'd previously thought), and the vertical the nose.

The top of the ear in relation to the corner of the eyesocket is a good way of determining the orientation of the head.  When viewed in profile, the line that connects the top-front part of the ear (where it attaches to the head) and the eyes is at the halfway point down the head.

Facial Anatomy Lesson

The only drawing I've done today.  I watched a lesson on facial anatomy.  I'll probably need to watch it again at some point, could have paid it better attention than I did.  Even so, I think it really improved my understanding of the forms that comprise the head.

Here are some of the main points I remember:

-the basic forms of the face have key points defining them (like how you can easily define a cube by it's vertices)

-the corners of the eyesockets and cheekbones form a rectangle; from these points going to the back of the head a fairly flat plane is formed on either side of the head

-when defining the eyebrow/nose area, there's a specific number of points a person has here (creating planes/lines inbetween these points), these points are arranged in a large variety of ways between people

-the basic mouth area shape is very similar to a half sphere; the teeth are arrayed in a u-shape, a lot narrower than you may think at first

-a way of thinking about drawing the lips is imagining a bird with wings spread sitting on top of an egg

-basic skull shape is egg-like, wider at the back than the front; the profile of the head fits nicely into a rectangular shape that can be divided to place the features of the face (general placement)
(half-way down are the center of the eyes, half-way from eyebrows (not the eyes!) to chin is the bottom of the nose, half-way between the nose bottom and chin is the bottom of the lower lip)

-thickest part of the nose connects at the cheekbone

-the nostrils are basically cup shaped, with a very large variety of nostril sizes, shapes and orientations

-the end of the nose cartilage tapers to a point; the cartilage forms a triangle as it meets the cheekbone on either side

-there's a small change of plane direction between the nose and eyesocket, resulting in value change

-the outer corners of the eyesockets and the eyebrows are often mistaken as the same thing, the eyesocket fits into the bottom of the brow

-the eyelid, while thin, still has a thickness that should be defined; various folds can occur where the eyelid meets the eyesocket and cheekbone

(I should do this with the other tutorials I have..)

...

I suppose I don't really have any explanation for this.

Gesture

In an effort to draw from something by sight, I've been looking at posemaniacs for some human forms.  I was using the applet made for exercising gesture drawing.  I gave myself 60 seconds for each pose, the default is 30 seconds but that's too quick for me!  http://www.posemaniacs.com/

It was somewhat stressful, knowing that I only had so long to try to capture what was shown.  Good practice though, I'd find it difficult to enforce a hard cut off time limit on myself doing my regular doodles.

(Post title goes here)

I have this fairly vague idea, inspired by a mix of Contact, Metroid and The Dig.  Her head is too large, I really ought to plan out proportions better.  An anatomy course would be useful, but I guess the most important thing is to get the idea across, regardless of perfect form.

Meh Inducing Sunday

Not really feeling it today, not sure I should post this one... oh well.

Was looking at some of Charlie Bowater's stuff today, she's crazy good: http://charliebowater.tumblr.com/

Some doodles from October 2010.

Saturday Again

This one got kind of messed up...  Reference here: http://www.women-hairstyles.com/images/chinese-hairstyle.jpg

The character is a real messy copy from an image in some fellows portfolio.  A talented guy named Alan Cook: http://cookedart.carbonmade.com/projects/2074003#2.  I like his style, shows a good understanding of shape that I'm still lacking.  The lamp and digital clock are part of what I see from my seat at my computer!

I enjoy drawing weird looking birds, but I bet these aren't nearly as weird looking as a whole lot of actual birds.  Planet Earth is an amazing series, David Attenborough is awesome.  If I could, I'd just watch that series over and over for drawing inspiration.