Meager offering

Sorry for so few posts lately. I've been extremely busy at work, and we've been in the process of moving at home (we've actually been in the new house for a couple weeks now, but there are always so many projects after you move).

I could only dedicate ten minutes to the figure drawing session this morning, but the model had such an awesome face I just had to exaggerate it a little.

Friday drawing session

This one was turning out pretty good, I just ran out of time. This was about 90 minutes, all digital.

Drawing session and Ace in Action concept

I was experimenting with color in this morning's drawing session, but I could never get the skin tones to work quite right. I feel okay about the picture anyway, but just in case it's not enough I'll include some conceptual development from Chicken Little: Ace in Action. This was the original design for Abby's fighter, before they changed it to a hovercraft. I wanted her ship to mix the trendy feminine Volkswagon Beetle-esque look with the military purpose of her fighter.

Friday drawing session doodlery

Some drawing session paintings just work, and others I decide aren't worth posting by themselves. The smart part of my brain says that means I shouldn't be posting them now either, but the stupid part of my brain hopes that nobody will notice even though I'm drawing attention to their deficiencies. I do like lots of things about these though, despite their various problems.

Avalanche drawing session

I went to the drawing session this morning and tried to apply some of the things I've been learning lately from the tutorial sessions by Adam Ford and Dave McClellan. I painted this almost entirely with Painter's "Loaded Palette Knife," because I wanted a different effect than in my usual paintings.

Cute Baby

I did this picture of our newborn son for his birth announcement. I'm not usually good at drawing babies or kids, but I like how this one turned out.

Church drawings

For some reason, sometimes I have an easier time paying attention in church if I'm drawing. Maybe it keeps me from being fidgety, and I think I'm usually studying people's faces anyway and this gives me a way to channel that split focus so I can listen better.

These are done with ballpoint pen, and usually pretty hasty before the person moves, so that's why I never get down to their bodies.

More digital life painting

This started out as a caricature, then I reined it back in as I was painted---that's why there's so much proportional weirdness. I am happy with the colors, though. I think this was about 90 minutes






















Also, I finished my last class at school, I'll be officially graduated in April. I feel like I should hand out cigars or something. Or was that for the baby?

Friday drawing session

Trying something a little different with the model this time---a little more stylization re-posing to bring out a more design-oriented drawing than usual.

Avalanche drawing session

I decided to work on improving my use of color, so I've started bringing my laptop to the live drawing session on Fridays. Doing a caricature from life is, in some ways, easier than doing it from a photo. However, translating the colors and lighting from what I saw to the computer was more difficult. I'm happy with what came out, though.

More bus drawings

One of these times I'm going to draw more than the head and shoulders, you just wait and see.

Lazy caricature

This girl was funny, always stretching her lips out and adjusting her face, like she was afraid still that her mouth would get stuck in one expression if she held it long enough. Or maybe it's that super-self-conscious model mindset. Either way, it was hard to do her face.

I generally hate the big-head-small-body type of caricature, and that's how this one ended up looking, so boo to me. I fuzzed out the terrible body I did though, so at least you don't have to deal with that part.

Friday drawing session

Avalanche has a figure drawing session every Friday, but I'm not an accomplished figure drawer, so I don't often spend much time in there. I guess I'm uncomfortable drawing around all the people here who can whip out amazing figure drawing after amazing figure drawing. I'm lucky when I don't end up with some type of disproportional disaster. Still, it's good to exercise my drawing and design muscles. Sometimes I'll use the session to do a caricature or cartoon version of the model, which I think is useful in a different way. I was only in there for a few minutes this last Friday, so I focused on the head of this guy. It's hard to caricature someone who has the "model look," because their faces are so darn normal.

More funny faces

Been busy this week, so sorry for the lame post. The first one is, in fact, a lady. She's the bus driver in the morning. I don't feel bad making fun of her, because she is the devil.

Funny faces

I want to start drawing from life more. It's fun, and feeds my brain with new ideas.


Here's a couple doodles of people from the bus, and a drawing of the model from my work's "drawing session" this morning. She had this funny grimace-smile that I wanted to capture.
The colors on the first one turned out awful because I started out trying to paint him in bluish light, but that failed so I changed it. I need to experiment with other types of lighting, though.