Snow Monster

Another one for the Avalanche blog. Someone just asked me where I got the idea from, and I told him it just came to me. What I didn't tell him that I breathed, slept, ate and drank Calvin and Hobbes throughout my entire childhood.

Something different, but why?

I tried to abstract the figure in the drawing session on Friday, resulting in this sort of strange hybrid between cartoony and real. Even with all the things I changed, I was still sticking too close to the model.

I used to have teachers that would emphasize, "Draw what you SEE." But I can't help but feel like I need to break from that and draw what I percieve instead. Maybe that's what they were talking about? But when I just draw what I see, I end up with a cold, dead sculpture (sort of like this picture). What I feel like I ought to be doing is capturing the action and essence of what I see---not the literal measurements and forms, but the image that is alive in my brain. I keep trying to reinterpret the figure in these drawing sessions, but I'm just changing the forms and facts. What am I missing? Is it just in the pose? Magic?

I may not get it yet, but at least now I have a goal to accomplish.

Ice Cream

My wife tells me that for a blog named "Tasty Art," there are far too few tasty tidbits of actual food. So, I redirect my faithful readers to a recipe she made for homemade ice cream. It's very good, I think you should all try it.

So there you have it.

In honor of this actual-food-inspired post, I started a new picture. I was thinking of the Illustration Friday topic for this week,"Detach," so I might enter it there when I'm done.

*Edit*: Finished the picture and replaced it.

Cover, declared done

I'll probably make a few minor changes to this in a few days when it starts to bother me, but for now I've hit that wall of "I'm tired of working on this."

Yippy

Only had about 15 minutes to dedicate to the drawing session this morning, so this is what you get. Usually when I do these things I use col-erase pencils, and I've noticed that different colors have different ways of interacting with the paper. Vermillion is my current favorite (no, I'm not joking), because of the way you can layer it on top of itself almost endlessly to get darker and darker lines. Awful for shading, though.

Part 4: Recomposition and the Muddy Stage

I always hit this ugly point in a painting. All of my careful planning and thought appears to start unraveling at this point: I start seeing all sorts of new flaws in the image, like the problematic transition area between the ninjas and the pirates, and I begin to question my judgement.

Fortunately, experience tells me that the best way to get through this stage is to ignore the voices of discouragement and keep pressing forward. Sometimes the best thing to do is avoid the problem areas and continue with your favorite parts, waiting for inspiration to strike. Other times the best thing is to ask for help. This time, I'm going to do both. Help, anyone? What's bothering you and how should I fix it?

On a positive note, one decision I'm sure of now. That's whether the scene should be day or night. I started this out as a night scene, and I knew within about 15 minutes that it wouldn't work out. I initially agreed with everyone that said it should be night, but when I started painting it that way, I started to see all sorts of distracting problems caused by a relatively close spot light---particularly in how it spread the shadows over the figures. I think I'd have to start over and rethink the scene if I wanted the night thing to work. I'm glad people suggested night though, because I probably would have started with the day otherwise, but then always had a nagging doubt that maybe night would be better. Now I can move forward, knowing day is best.

That is, until Adam or someone else does a paintover and proves me embarrassingly wrong.