There and Back Again: Days 119-126

Day 119: This is not really something 'I'd do', but it fell out of my pencil and I really do love it. The gesture of her, especially - though I know the  anatomy leaves a lot to be desired.

Day 120: This is... this is a drawing I really love. A lot of things came together here, and my eternal love for devotional art really clicked within the drawing.

Day 121: Action! Anatomically impossible though it may be! I really enjoy drawing drapery in a few very simple action lines. And hair is always my favorite.

Day 122: This is a... strange drawing. I don't even know - and I'm pretty sure that all of that stippling constitutes cheating on my hour minimum. I still like the outcome even so?

Day 123: Here is, very simply, me enjoying myself. Boneless arms - or elegance+3?

Day 124: Apparently November 1st is International Self-portrait Day, and I found this out in time to do it as my drawing for this project! I'd done a self-portrait before, in September, and here's the difference two months makes:

Day 125: I slipped back into the horse-faces I used to draw to the exclusion of any decent profiles here. I like her hair, though? And the fall of her cloak.

Day 126: Aaaand here's what happens when a drawing just doesn't work. I was sick and tired and I really just didn't being any discipline to bear on this.

There and Back Again: Days 36-41

A friend invited me to draw birds with her at the Natural History Museum, and, given that I love birds but don't have a lot of experience drawing them, I accepted gladly. I was feeling pretty good about my technical drawing ability by that point: my drawings had been getting better every day, and I hadn't really run into a real challenge.

Then I spent an hour and a half in the NHM failing to draw birds.

Day 36: It was pretty bad.

Frustrated, deeply, by my failure, I decided that I was going to bang my head against my inability to draw birds until I fixed it.

Day 37: Not as bad as the first attempt, but not great.

 Day 38: Better, but wings are still mysteries to me.

Day 39: I decided to draw more wings, in an effort to stop sucking at them.

Day 40: Anatomy studies. This is when I realized I was getting too wrapped up in the structure, and needed to pull back to the birds themselves.

Day 41: Success! Not, you know, the most amazing birds ever - but recognizable as themselves, and drawn without too much frustration. With this page I declared Operation: Lern 2 Burd a success, and decided to move on for the present.

Holding the Pass drawing

I can't say enough about how essential critique is. The difference between the first drawing and the second is the difference between an ok illustration (which is compositionally About A Butt) and an image that tells a story. I'm so excited to paint this!

Tristan and Isolde Drawing

This is after two days of rolling crits and a couple of rounds of new ref photoshoots. If you recall, it came from this:

The difference a year makes

In the two portfolios I've posted, there were only two pieces that survived the intervening purge, and they didn't survive unchanged.

The originals are on the left, the edits on the right. They were completed almost exactly a year apart, and in that year I leaned things like referencing and anatomy and value structure. They're most assuredly not perfect, but I'm especially proud of The Narwhal Woman's growth.