There and Back Again: Days 127-133

Day 127: This was a Tired Drawing, and I hated it at the time and the anatomy is really suspect, but - I like this a lot, actually.

Day 128: This. Okay, her spine is broken, but this? This was an absolute joy to draw, and it makes me really, very happy to look at. I mean, drapery and a beautiful lady and a halo - the only way I could hit any more of my own buttons would be to have made her hair caught in the wind or something.

Day 129: This is a very different piece, but I like it a lot. Working with angles instead of curves, and hardness as something other than an accept for softness.

Day 130: I was aiming for something in specific here, and while I got it, it doesn't really belong in the rest of the book? I don't know - it's a drawing I like, but it's obviously something different from something simply coming from me.

Day 131: I, uh. Really, really like this one. This is something I want to re-approach in a drawing or a painting, or at least work with again, because something about it really does click. Again with using hardness as a main focus and softness as an accent...

Day 132: And then we have a drawing with no hardness in it at all, and a lot of artist notes from the lecture I was attending at Illuxcon.

Day 133: This is a perfectly acceptable drawing. Nothing special, not much to say - more Illuxcon notes, and not much else.

Precious Burdens Drawing

The drawing for my next painting. I'm very excited about it! It's a simple portrait, to give me a little bit of a breather in comparison to the endless uphill battle that is Holding the Pass - though that simplicity is going to be challenging in and of itself, since it means there's nothing to hide mistakes with.

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 113-118

Day 113: Having fun with lines, finding gestures and expressions I haven't played with before, and pretty ladies in poofy dresses. Also an eye, because that figure really didn't take that long.

Day 114: Really stretched [read as: incorrect] anatomy - but that push forward, that longing upward, is something I love.

Day 115: Nothing too hard, but a pretty good representation of what I like to draw: sad, quiet, elegant ladies, with the added bonus of bird things. Not shown: flowey hair, flowey fabric, low-chroma cool palettes.

Day 116: This is a Drawing about Hair, which is good because it certainly isn't about that 'horse'. There is a reason I reference so heavily when I'm doing a real drawing (as in, for an illustration), and it is because I actually don't know how to draw anything apart from hair, and faces at a certain angle, and slim/lean female bodies from certain angles. Everything else is guesswork and/or wrong, which is alright for a sketch like this but not even sort of acceptable elsewhere.

Day 117: This just works for me, from the gesture to her expression to that hair.

Day 118: The previous page worked; this one didn't. It should have been a good drawing, and the face started out strong, but I missed the mark on the gesture and spent so long messing around with it that I didn't wind up doing anything with it.

There and Back Again: Days 102-112

Day 102: This is the drawing, more than any other drawing, which I need to take into thumbnails and find the illustration it wants to be. Because this? This is something I want to explore.

Day 103: This one, not so much. I really don't know how to draw wings without reference, so while I do like her body and the general feel of this, the wings are just wrong.

Day 104: The gesture of the figure, especially above the hips, worked out real nicely here. Things like this - moments of intense personal drama - are what I really want to explore with my art, so getting it in a sketch like this gives me a good feeling about taking other figures with other emotions forward to finish.

Day 105: Sometimes, you just gotta draw a naked lady with a ferret and weird hair.

Day 106: And then I drew one of Lauren Cannon's ladies without realizing. (Well. Needs more creepiness and less softness to actually be one of Lauren's. But still!)

Day 107: I think there's something to be said about a person who enjoys doing brickwork as much as I do. But hey at least there is a lot of dramatic drapery!

Day 108: This feels like a cop-out, because all of that intricacy in the halo? I can do that stuff in my sleep. It's a null-space time-filler for me. It looks nice, though, and further it apparently looks impressive?

Day 109: So I broke the poor girl's neck in this, and what, just what re: the spacial relationship between her and the boy - but even so, I'm... surprisingly fond of this.

Day 110: I asked my roommate to give me a prompt; she said, 'a monastic order of a fictional god'. So there's this. Those are meant to be braids, for what it's worth. There's a whole lot of untapped potential in this...

Day 111: So many of my ladies are soft and sad and flowey, that I decided to take a day to do a lady who looks like Business. Also, drapery.

Day 112: ...and to follow up a badass, I do one of the softest, flowey-est ladies I've done in a long time. Oh there are no regrets, because as much fun as it is to draw hard-edged women, this right here will always be at the core of my aesthetic.

Illuxcon V

Illuxcon was this weekend, and I'm still not sure how to approach the process of digesting it.

Unlike the IMC, which was one solid week of an experience, made up as it was by many moments, this year I experienced Illuxcon in a series of rapid but discrete moments. They added up to something monumental for me - I have a sensibility that's not just in my head but visible to peers and idols and art directors, and while I'm not 'there' yet I am close - but they break down in my head to individual conversations and reviews, and so make the overall weekend harder to parse.

This was my third year at the show. Each time I've attended, it's been important: the first year, when I was a junior, Illuxcon was a weekend of inspiration and encouragement in the middle of the awful pit of thesis that I'd spend the next five months crawling through; last year, as a senior, I felt like a part the fantasy illustration community for the first time. But this time -

- this time each critique focused on polish, on being aware of the pitfalls I was hitting that were holding down the average, on building a consistent portfolio, because the consensus was that the work I was doing was good and very nearly there. This time I hung out with people I privately have always thought of as 'the cool kids'. This time I had conversations with artists whose work has been inspiring me deeply for years. This time, I had a Showcase table that my idols were stopping at to compliment my paintings; this time, one of them nearly sold.

I have not been making art long; I haven't been serious about it for much more than four years. But I have worked hard to make up for the gap, and it's things like the IMC, like this past weekend, that make me feel like I'm not a fool for going to art school in the middle of an economic meltdown, nor for dedicating my life to a field that's notorious for the lack of security it affords.

There are too many people to thank; there is too much inspiration to express. So I guess I'll go back to painting.

There and Back Again: Days 95-101

Day 95: Oh, this page was great. I really enjoyed it - the loose fast gesture of the first figure, the fun with details and expression on the profile, the flow of the floating head. Things don't always fall out of my pencil as neatly as these did, so I try to really inhabit my drawing when it does happen like that.

Day 96: And again. That figure just clicked together - I started with loosely referencing a photo of Florence Welch, and then just let the drawing pull in the direction it wanted to go. It was a fast one, so I spent the rest of my hour pushing myself to draw someone a little less idealized.

Day 97: This - this drawing makes me laugh. It is hysterical and I was giggling for pretty much the entire hour+ it took... but I actually like some of the things going on as well.

Day 98: I really love the figure in all of her soft simplicity. The other two drawings were a little too overwrought, but I like them a lot more than I did at the moment.

Day 99: I was very sad on the day I did this drawing, though I can't really remember why. I didn't want to challenge myself; I didn't want to have to think hard. So I drew things that are very easy and meditative for me: a profile, curly designs. And it really was a form of meditation, because I emerged from the hour fairly peaceful, if still melancholy.

Day 100: One hundred days is a milestone no matter how you slice it, but in the spirit of my not really making a big deal of each month's end, this is just a drawing. I put in a background because the figure seemed to demand it - she has a great attitude, one the ladies I draw usually don't have. Whatever's wrecked back there, you can be sure she's the one who did it.

Day 101: And then we swing in the absolute opposite direction: here is a very soft, very flowey lady. My aesthetic, let me show you it.