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A couple nights in a row just full of artistblock and bad drawing helped build anxiety for art time this week. So I took a few days off and played some games instead and jumped back in last night. I think I might skip doing a nightly update post, maybe one every few days or so - we'll see.

Going back to the Facebook thing and skipping ahead a few spots in the friends list for something that can maybe foster some imagination. My brother's goofy face dressed in his Halloween costume (star trek) while holding a can of cheap beer had me sold.

I'm really playing around with this one though, instead of a strait painting from the photo ref, I'm using the photo for his stance, his face, my sister in-law's head and turning it into a spaceman movie poster/romance novel cover of sorts. So I'm combining multiple references and also pulling from imagination for this one.

Painting update: calling this one done for now

Time to move onto a new project. Starting to get a bit of burn out with this one. The only thing I might come back to fool around with is the flooring, so I think it's a safe stopping place.

Painting update: nearly done

Fixed the veil and a few other misc. things on the figures, hung the moon and got the first background idea in. I'll probably run through a few others - not sure how I feel about it.

Thinking I'll be on to the next project this weekend.

Painting update: both figures just about done

At a good stopping point for the night. Both figures are pretty much complete. I'm sure I'll fiddle around here and there a bit, and I need to redo the veil; got a few different ideas on how to do that already.

I'll need to put some thought into the rest of the canvas.

Painting update - Hands in

Did my best at making that hand up. It's at least at a spot I'm happy with.

I concluded though, that the top half of the dress is quite off. 1 bad measurement must have thrown it. The bottom half looks right, but the more I worked on the top, the more it looked less like her dress. Last thing I want to do is screw up a bride's dress, so that will need to be scrapped and redrawn out.

I'm a little worried I might be going a bit too detailed on the dress, it might be pulling the focus too much from the gaze... We'll see once I get the top half corrected and her arm/hair/veil/face detailed. There's some perspective tricks I could use on the background/floor too, to emphasize focus back into that circle (face > face/hair > arm > hands > face.

Oh - regarding the other hands that gave me trouble, I don't recall mentioning it, but we decided that the arms are pushed out further than they appear, with her forearm close to parallel to her body. That would give just enough angle to have that top bump be her finger tips and their palms facing. It was also decided that his pinkie was too stubby. The scale looked right with where it looked to end, but being so low res, the call was made to extend it about 25%.

Cutting out now before burning out

Very high frustration levels tonight, trying to figure out what is happening with the other hand. Stopping now before I quit for good. All I've done tonight is getting scrapped - this is just bad.

Seriously though, what am I supposed to do with this: 

Think I might just end up doing a color blob and blurring everything away from the heads.

Painting Update - Trouble deciphering the hands

Been jumping around a bit tonight. I think I got the suit at a good point, and figuring out the texture of the dress is going well. Here's a detail shot of how that's coming along.

The hands though are killing me. Not because they're hands - drawing my own hands got me through many study halls and lunches - it's another case of the ref photo just being too low res.

Deciphering this is hard. At first, I started drawing that whole mass as David's hand, but the more I looked at the top hump, trying to figure out what's going on, the more it looked like those were actually Alison's finger coming out, like they would if they were holding hands - eh? The slight shadow supports that idea... but then when you put that into practice with your own arms, I can't bend that way - and I'm pretty bendy. So, back to that being part of David.

Then, just trying to figure out how the hand holding is working out has got me stumped. If you look at where David's pinkie ends, perpendicular to it, there are 2 highlight lines with a shadow line between. To me, this reads as the tendons in a wrist, which would mean Alison's palm is facing to the camera... but the shadows on the elbow are reading to me the opposite. I might have to see a recreation to understand this part.

Here's a detail of where I'm leaving the hands for now...

Panting Update - David's face

Unfortunately, the photo was pretty low res, so I've had to do a lot of guess work with getting David's face details. Think I've got it as close as I'm going to, without attempting to recreate it. If nothing else, it's great practice at making up faces.

 Think I'll take a break and maybe come back to it to work out the suit with a fresh eye.

Side note: kind of funny; most of the stuff I draw and the past couple paintings looked better the more zoomed out they are. This detail shot though looks better the more zoomed in.

David WIP2

Getting late. Just finished getting in the under painting for both figures, so good time to stop for the night.

Using a different technique this time; trying out CTRL + Paint's 'paint big, then chisel in with an eraser' method. It doesn't feel foreign, but I feel a bit less efficient; /shrug.

Start of a New Project

We cut Hell Week day 3 a bit short; just built the drawers for the bed. So I had time to start on the next facebook photo project. 

Going to do a bit less photo realism with this one - at least that's the current plan. The moon was a big bench sitting on a stage behind them, but I'm scaling it down and raised it; contemplating bringing them outside for this. Leaving the string lights... I love string lights.

Hell Week day 2

Unfortunately, I am just now calling it a night from Ikea Hell Week day 2. I vastly underestimated the time it would take me to build the bed - and it's not fully finished yet. Got the frame made and the mattress in, but tomorrow I've got to build the drawers to complete it. It's after midnight and I've got an early start at work, so I think I'll need to claim today as my first cheat day and skip drawing for the first night since 1/26 iirc.

Hopefully tomorrow leaves me with more time. Have to build the drawers; disassemble the guest room bed and our old bed; move the guest room bed into storage in the basement; reassemble our old bed in the guest room and build 2 cribs. Not necessarily all tomorrow, but the salesman at Ikea strongly emphasized calling within 48 hours of delivery if there are any missing parts or damage - so the sooner I can get the cribs built, the better; can't start them till our old bedroom is cleared out though.

I've at least got the next project lined up though. Should be a fun one.

Painting Update - done, for now

Ikea hell week started out as anticipated; late drivers, forgetting more than half the order at the warehouse (scheduled to deliver tomorrow) and finding the mattress is about 1' wider than the opening in our stairway... But, the new bedroom is cleared, the mattress finally made it up the stairs by brute force and is super comfy for a $500 mattress (like a good $200 a night hotel bed).

Didn't think I'd get much painting done after all of that, but I've caught a wind (lost count) and went at it. I think this one is as far as I'm going to take it for now. I might return to add a background; started drawing in the one from the ref, but it flattens the image out.

Looking it over, I think the best done parts are the two belts, the belt buckle, my hair, the pockets on my pants, the sweater and the arm around her shoulder. What is this though... painting number 4? Keeping that in mind, I'm quite pleased with how it all turned out and also the leaps in improvement with each painting. New one tomorrow - pending the results of Ikea Hell Week day 2... we'll see what happens.

Painting Update - jeans and leather

Getting late, stopping just short of finished. Tomorrow, I'll fix up that arm, add more details to Lindsey's hair and maybe add the poster in the background. It's the start of Ikea-hell week though, so we'll see how much time I have to work at this.

Not the best jeans ever, but I'm not sure I currently have the skill/patience to perfect the texture.

Painting Update - Flannel headache

We're going to call that shirt done; at least for now. Getting a headache from focusing so intently in lines. It looks good as is, but the actual shirt has like 4 more line layers to tackle... We will pretend they don't exist, eh? It'll be a while before I work with a flannel pattern again; it really helps with making structure pop, but it is such a pain in the ass... no wonder in cartoons, flannel is often just a static layer.

That cuff on the left is bugging me, now that I'm looking at the image zoomed out. I don't want to look at the ref photo again tonight to compare it, but the shadows feel off between it and the sleeve.

Painting Update - flannel shirts suck

Getting late and kind of close to rage quitting on that shirt. I went through a few attempts tackling the shirt like I did the dress and sweater, but the pattern on it is killing me. I decided to just go over my line drawing with the wand to pull the shirt all out as a single flat layer and paint can it to a solid red base... I think from there, my next step will be trying to picture the actual shirt as a solid color, and get the shading in. Then go back in with the lines. There is so much going on with that shirt...

All the skin is done enough and the second cuff is pretty done too. I may even tackle the belt and jeans before going back to the shirt... Or back-burner this one and start onto the next... we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Painting Update

I was hoping to get further along tonight, but I'm too tired to start into the next section. My hand and rolled up sleeve are done. The hand was more difficult than I had anticipated.

Painting Update

Finished the belt, got the sweater pretty much done and filled in her chest while at it - looked weird unfinished with everything around it done. Tomorrow, I think I'll tackle her hair, the two hands and my elbow.

Painting Update

Got the dress done for the most part, and touched up on Lindsey's face a bit (around the eye, the mouth and the silhouette); should look a bit more like her now. I'm thinking that tomorrow I'll put in her sweater and maybe start on fixing up her hair if the sweater doesn't take all night.

I think the dress turned out pretty well. I'm quite happy with it for being so long since I last drew fabric.

Painting Update

Started early tonight luckily, getting tired already. Here's the progress so far.

Painting Update

Getting late, so stopping here.

Did some jumping around today, getting Lindsey's hair just about ready for a detailing layer, throwing down some building layers for my face and touched up a little on her face a bit too. I think I'll focus on my face tomorrow... at this point in development, it looks like an old guy and is bugging me too much to let it sit that way for long. heh...

I noticed I've gotten a little faster... but I still feel like I'm going incredibly slow. Speed will come with practice... but I think I might look for some shortcuts in the next few paintings; think there's a few steps I can skip to get into the detailing process faster.

Painting Update

Tiring day, but we got a lot done. Both cribs and a new bed and mattress are being shipped, but we had the car filled with what we could. Such a shame that Ikea pulled their plans to open a store in Cleveland.

Started doing some build-up layers on Lindsey's face. It is just about to that magic point where a spark goes off... I need to step away from it for a bit though, so just in case I don't get back to it tonight, here's the update.

That shadow I'm casting onto her forehead is a bigger pain in the ass to recreate than I had anticipated. Needs to be lightened just a tiny bit, but the shape is accurate enough for me. The eyebrow needs lightening as well, I'll probably tackle that with the hair though. I just wanted to get it in quickly, so she would start looking more like a person.

Facebook Gets Drawn

I decided I've improved enough to start trying to paint people I know - best place for ref photos is of course facebook - heh. So, I'll be going down my friends list trying to pick out at least 1 good quality (high res, natural lighting, not dragged through filter-hell...) and interesting photo.

First up is the wife. Scoured her photos and saved maybe 5 that could be good - and didn't get vetoed while she was looking over my shoulder... Ultimately, I decided on one of the two of us from a photo shoot a couple years ago with her friend from CCAD, Ashleigh Saylor - who also was the photographer for my sister's wedding.

Line drawing is in and the first 4 layers of skin under-painting are down. Got an early start tomorrow; making the pilgrimage to Ikea for nursery furniture; so stopping here for the night.

It hasn't gotten to the point of really seeing anything out of it yet, but a few more layers in and I'll start the blending and shadows, then move onto doing clothing.

I'm not done with the old man I've been working on, btw... I figure I'll probably start up a few paintings over the next couple weeks and jump around between them.

Old Man Painting Progress

More painting work tonight. I submitted it for some critique and assistance with adding weight to the floaty glasses. Extra shadowing was added and that seemed to do the trick.

I did some work on the background too... I can't decide though, if it looks too washed out in red with this background though... I think I like it better with these hue and saturation changes. I might mess around with the background more. The red wash kind of reminds me or a norman rockwell, so I might take the background that direction instead of the more classic portrait style. /shrug

Started on the shirt layers as well (t-shirt's basically done, dress shirt needs a finishing layer - might add lines to the shirt like in the ref, and the sweater is just blocked in so far).

Progress with painting

I did a little face stuff at work in pencil earlier - still a mind-numbingly boring and tedious project... But I'm hoping that if I start doing it in pencil, it'll kind of become more like doodling while on the phone.

I felt like getting in some painting tonight. been a little while, and I don't want to slow down that skill's progress while it's picking up pretty well.

Still a work in progress, but I'm at a good stopping point just before midnight tonight.

I'm tempted to leave a lot of the undetailed parts as they are (the ears; the neck; the edges of the face from the mouth out), just as a trick to help direct the focus - plus, when zoomed out, or squinting, my mind fills in quite a lot of detail for me with what's already there. Didn't notice how hard the lines where in the cheeks from the nose to the mouth... I'll need to smooth that out a little - probably widen inward to blend into the upper lip a bit.

Here's a 2 step gif from the previous save to this one.

Burnout

Still very burnt out and quickly getting frustrated - 45 minutes in, and I've erased the first face 6 times now. Drawing is happening, but I doubt I'll have anything to post tonight. About ready for another hiatus already :P

faces day 3

20 is really too ambitious... got his far and I feel completely zapped.

This is so incredibly boring... dreading doing it again tomorrow. Ugh.

Banner

Also... I need to make a banner.

Faces Day 2

Got a really late start due to a need for a nap, and then watching a follow-up vid to the one I mentioned yesterday (also an hour long - but done over a drawing, so could be minimized and just listened to), so I failed today's homework... 12:30 on a work night and I'm only 4 heads in. At least it's more mileage than if I just went back to bed instead, eh?

The first one started to come out kind of feminine - which I've never been able to do from imagination very well... In fact, I can count on 1 finger, how many projects I've ever done with a female from imagination that I didn't scrap after 2 minutes (that one way back in high school with the giant robot thing with the little girl holding a teddy bear). So, I decided to push this new learning style towards helping with working out how to draw girl faces.

Looking back at the past couple hours of work, I realize that I should have probably broken the steps down a bit more. Instead of getting so far with each, start by doing a bunch of just face shapes to figure out what makes a face look girly - I know from reading up that it's more rounded features and a smaller jawline... but I never worked out analytically how to make that work out. Hair... holy hell... that one will need it's own breakdown too. Maybe even after a lot of reference study - I realized that I have no idea how to construct long hair from imagination.

Also, I kind of like this style for eyes that I'm working on. My papers at work might get a little more doodly (doodleie... doodlie... dudely... is that even a word?).

Faces

First 20 done. Analyzed what works and what doesn't as I went. Will pull it up tomorrow to look at again before doing another 20.

Coffee Break

Selecting a Sycra video to watch while sitting on the jon, I decided on Iterative Drawing - The Fastest Way to Improve. About 5 minutes in, I realized my mistake, as it's an hour long... It was interesting though, so I sat and watched for about 15 minutes when my foot started to fall asleep, so I noted the time and saved it for later.

Decided to finish it before getting started with tonight's stuff. It was really interesting. For me, mainly because he jabs quite a bit at the way I was taught and trained to draw - 'draw what you see, not what you think you see'. I've never had someone shake it up like that before. Having an open mind while watching, I  did make several connections to what he was saying - for instance, I don't like to sing my own praises, but I can draw from reference quite well. Make me draw without a reference however and I'm lost. I have a natural talent at drawing, but I never really built up the mileage like he goes over. It's probably why I also never grasped the concept of compositions, always favoring the middle, only caring that the thing I was drawing was drawn well. Start something and work towards finishing it.

While I'm still rusty creatively, I think I'm going to switch gears to prioritize this kind of work, ~20 faces a day every day, analyze each face as I go and look it over again the following day. Working at understanding what I'm drawing will probably help with getting over that frustration I get at my drawing skills when I try to draw from imagination lately. We'll consider it 'homework' of sorts...I can't work on anything else till I knock out a page of faces (or bodies, or whatever I'm building on). It'll slow my progress of building up a portfolio, but long run, I think it will be a huge help in building skill instead. And since I'm not looking for a job in the industry or applying to a school, quickly rebuilding a portfolio can definitely take a back seat to building skill instead.

David, if you read this, you should watch that video too if you ever want to try to get into drawing again. It's an interesting guide to learning to draw intuitively/creatively as an analytical person.

Ok... now to get 20 faces done.

Progress post

I like weekends. I get so much more time to put towards my daily projects. It's hard to get much done on a weeknight - at least beyond building on my sketching skill (note to self, work more on speed and less focus on details). Weekends, I get to spend time hating the early painting steps till it starts to actually look like something.

It's getting late and we're headed to the Grandparents-in-law's early tomorrow, so I'm going to bed, but here is day 1 of this weekend's project. I'm tackling it with painting in mind, very minimal use of my sketching layer... should be interesting to see with that turned on at the end.

I don't know about you, but I think this is a huge improvement over my first shot at painting (the other old guy from 2 weeks ago(?)). It's kind of looking like my dad + another 30 years (and a broken nose... probably from teaching the twins martial arts).

Click the image for a larger version if you want to see details... it's a bit too tall for the 650 wide scale the blog is set too... the file I'm working on is 2302x4014 at 300 res. Started out trying to do 6500x6500 to make it a shower curtain upload at society6... but the brush lag was about 5 seconds behind. How awesome would it be to sneak it into someone's house and set up as a prank?... too bad.

Practice

Just practicing different things tonight. Not much worth saving or uploading. Starting to get some wrist fatigue and it's getting late for a work night, so calling it.

Meh pt2

Threw a bear in. Swapping to fool around with something else before bed.

Meh

Creativity is not taking me far tonight. Feeling burnt out, stopping here.

Poses 3

Poses 2

Getting late already, so just in case I don't get far enough along in tonight's project to post, here's tonight's pose warm ups to show I did something at least.

Children have HUGE heads... way bigger than I anticipated. Like, think you're drawing the scale comically large, then go bigger. Freaks.

Poses

Just working on capturing poses today. Haven't done it since 2005 - not as rusty as I anticipated.

I checked my work by overlaying after drawing the pose. Came pretty close on most of them. Going to go to bed early tonight, so stopping at 4. I think I'll work these in as warm ups to try and get more efficient at it.

Reddit Gets Drawn

I headed to /r/redditgetsdrawn for today's project. It's a bit too flooded with bad photos and people uninteresting subjects that would drive me crazy if I met them face to face. 'People tell me I have great jaw lines'... You know the type... There's some good ones in there though that for whatever reason haven't been drawn yet.

I had 4 pulled aside and ultimately decided to do the photo of a little girl with icecream, submitted by /u/annepyres.

Still counts as yesterday if I didn't sleep, right?

6 AM... just as I was about to hang it up in defeat around 5, something clicked. I gave up on that other thing I was working on earlier and went back to working from a reference photo.

I don't know what it is... I can draw from sight pretty well, and I can draw shapes fine... but not on their own. It's like how spelling bee kids have a surprisingly difficult time with easy small words. At least I have an understanding of the process. I watched another tutorial that I might give a shot tomorrow that approaches it a different way: Ahmed Aldoori's 'Drawing Figures and Poses QUICK TIP #1'

I struggled with this painting for quite a while, throwing so much at it... I ended up erasing about 40% of the painting's under layers that made up the hair/ear/back areas and kept all the 'no hope for it' parts in an 'in progress' kind of look, while refining the main face triangle (eyebrows to the mouth). I think it draws the focus to the eyes a lot more this way.

I have to keep reminding myself that for a second painting, it's not really that bad. Especially knowing that I didn't take any formal painting courses, so just running off of instinct, experimentation and aid from watching painters (primarily Sycra and Ahmed Aldoori).

 Here's another gif going through the layers - at least the visible ones... think there's about 8 layers that are just red, blue or cream ones like the 2 red layers.

Here's a bonus pic of all active layers from when I was about to quit... does not include erased areas around the hair, ear and back, but isn't that ugly? Yikes.

Coffee Break

Very slow going tonight... having one of those nights where for whatever reason, I have difficulty drawing a straight line or a circle and then focus on that problem for a while and as each one doesn't come out like in my head, I get a little more impatient and frustrated... Anyway, 1:22 AM, just finished a pot of coffee and a bowl of Lucky Charms. Even if I'm up till 7 and still have nothing to show for it, at least I will have spent those 10 hours building on drawing circles, triangles and rectangles... Started out with a female face proportion video... spent from 9 PM to 12 AM on step 1; draw an equilateral triangle on it's side... then from 12 to now, after saying screw it and working with imperfection (which kills me), this is as far as I've come - and I'm about to scrap it and start over - ha!

Break's over, back to work.

Old Man Profile Color Study - now with 100% more gif!

Went through the rabbit hole a while, watching youtube videos on digital painting. Decided to try it out with yesterday's old mad study - instead of starting from scratch :p

Edit: Gif of the layer process!

Old Man Profile Study

Taking a break from the pandas tonight. Wanted to try humans again, now that I've gained a little more experience with the tablet.

Turned out not bad for roughly an hour of work.

Zzzz

My bedroom is calling to me from the other side of the house... I should see what it wants.

Oh hey, a crappy from memory drawing of my bed... Yup, I'm kind of cheating in order to get some real sleep tonight.

My side is the one on the left with minimal cover and encroaching pillow bumpers.

Koala 3

Quite 'meh' about tonight's... kind of wish I skipped it and stayed in bed, but then my streak would be over already.

Looking very different from the previous 2, this guy will most likely not be included. At least I drew though, eh?

Second Koala

Took longer than I had hoped... good thing I've got a later start tomorrow morning. Here's a second koala.

These guys are fitting 2 wide and it looks like just enough space to fit 3 tall, so there will be 4 more to go.

Koalahaha

Heh heh heh

Koala

Better night tonight. Saw that Society6 added a duvet and shower curtain, and it's just bizarre enough to have interested me. Here's the start of one.

Working on a 6000x6000 pixel canvas. He takes up about 1/8th of it. I'm thinking of doing a grid pattern - ideally with either different gray faced animals... but if that fails, different koala faces and a last option of just pasting this mug all over it with maybe koala noses in some pattern on the background.

I'm wide open for suggestions of other gray faced animals to try out.

Another bum night.

Absolutely nothing of note came out of tonight's 6 hour reminder of why tend to take such long hiatuses from art. Started out with a new concept - the skill loss in figure drawing was frustratingly very apparent. Maybe it's not loss, but more a conversion problem, with forcing myself to learn to draw digitally.

To try and change pace to prevent burnout already, I want back to the WIP from yesterday. Decided to try to figure out to shade with this thing - granted an eye was probably not the best place to start with that, but that's what I picked. It went... 'ok'. Not happy with the results yet, but if digital has anything over traditional, it's being able to delete/hide layers if you don't like something. I'll have to find some good youtube tutorials on this stuff and probably just go back to the basics - balls and blocks. Take this a little slower like a classroom setting, instead of just jumping right in.

Because this is an art blog, and nothing of note or interest came from tonight's extra long session... here's a sketchbook fox from the last time I tried getting back into art.

Work In Progress

After a few hours of some really bad attempts at starting anything and frustration with just how foreign a tablet can feel compared to charcoal on a big sheet of butcher paper, I'm starting to get something going. I couldn't seem to turn off the right side of my brain and draw any straight forward concept... so I took a 5 minute break and remembered my trick from years ago when I'd run into that problem - draw a fast gesture line and slowly push and mold it into whatever the creative side comes up with.

A few of those out of the way, I decided to revisit a project I had done in college. It's too late to take it much further than it is right now, so we'll consider it a work in progress to come back to when I next hit a rough spot.