As it says on the tin: no real drawings for you. Gotta run one errand, then I crash.
-the sicktaur
Posts published in “Artworks”
Cat, when it's raining: "Let me out! Let me out! But not this door, it's wet. Let's try another door. And another! Or another! I gotta get out! Just hold the door open until the rain stops!"
Also cat, when it is nice and sunny: "Who cares about going outside? Ima gonna havva nap."
-the Centaur
Pictured: the cat-shaped void, Loki, actually using his void-colored cat tree for once. Image taken in infrared bands and color enhanced by NASA to show surface detail.
Drawn from an image, not a screensaver, so I had more time; but no construction lines, so the face ended up kind of kwonkeldy. I believe that construction lines help close the loop; but the exercise here was to carefully pay attention to the hair shapes to see how it flowed. For that purpose, it came out okay.
Definitely room for improvement on my end!
-the Centaur
I had a somewhat ruined piece of paper, not a lot of time, and there was an image of Belldandy from Ah My Goddess on my computer's screen saver, so I decided to draw that. Unfortunately, the screen saver kept changing, and even though there were several pictures of characters from the franchise, I couldn't quite keep the image straight.
Ah well, it's late, I'm tired, scan and send - keep drawing daily, no matter what.
Don't break the streak.
-the Centaur
A barista noticed my Green Lantern ring, and gave me a Green Lantern mocha. :-D
-the Centaur
Another hand, after Goldman. I thought I was doing quite well until I tried to close the loop on the hand, and realized I'd messed up the spacing, making the hand too wide, which I partially fixed; but that in turn messed up the webbing between the hand and the finger - leading to that dark line I could not fix.
Oh well, next time. Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More Goldman studies. Like an AI, I kept drawing this foot with six toes, not quite sure why. Mostly fixed it, but it could have been better, if only I had learned to count.
-the Centaur
More studies from the Goldman book.
-the Centaur
We have a black cat, so we got a black cat condo (just barely visible to the left). But of course, our cat-shaped void is a cat, and so prefers the blue couch, where its voluminous shedded fur is easily visible. My wife caught him in the act, so, enjoy this picture of our cat-shaped void, doing cat-styled things.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki on our couch. Interestingly, this picture was taken at an angle, so I rotated it, then used Adobe Photoshop's generative fill to recover the outer edge of the picture. The very outer edge is ... mostly right. Some weirdness is visible in the carpet patterns on the lower left, the brick pattern on the upper left, and whatever it is on the table on the right isn't there in reality. Otherwise, not a terrible job.
Xiao Dreamweaver from f@nu fiku again, this time drawn with a little more breathing room.
-the Centaur
busy putting out a fire. this is what you get. ciao, xiao.
Huh. I gave myself more time, worked on the construction lines, used better pens (though, blame your tools, I could tell that the older pens produced a worse line) and overall tried to make this come out better. But I don't really like how it turned out ... something is "off" about David Tennant here, more than just my typical need to draw more, draw more, draw more, and don't waste time.
-the Centaur
Pictured: the Fourteenth Doctor.
Took a little more time with this one, but still needed to start it at an earlier part of the day when I had more time. But today was really busy due to work and research, so it is what it is.
-the Centaur
Pictured, Peter Capaldi from a ScreenRant/Guardian article.
Same subject, using better pens this time. I can more or less confirm:
- A better arm position helps reduce the jerkiness of my drawing motions.
- Using the Micron pens beats using Pilot V5 for keeping a smooth line.
- A poor craftsman blames his instruments, as I can clearly tell I need both more practice, and to take more care in tracing lines.
- I need to give myself more time for these drawings, as I did much better when I was relaxed for time on our recent vacation.
Onward!
-the Centaur
What strikes me about this sketch is how much better the pencils looked. During the inking, my pen frequently "jumped" around on the paper, causing some of the lines to end up in the wrong place (particularly the right (drawn on the left) eye and the left (drawn on the right) jaw).
Perhaps another recommendation to re-visit my arm position (or perhaps the pen; this was a Pilot V5, which is a pen I love for writing, but not as good as the Microns and other pens I normally use for drawing).
Regardless ... keep going.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Porsche the Centaur, obviously.
SO this is with the notebook held further away and using more arm than wrist motion. I think it worked well.
-the Centaur
More from the Goldman book. I have a tremor in my hand which you can most readily see on the lower left; I traditionally have attributed it to the RSI that I picked up back in the late 90's during grad school (a combination of an internship with a bad ergonomic setup at work and at my apartment, during which I was also writing a proposal for the PEPE robot pet project and playing Dungeon Keeper at night; I woke up one day with a throbbing wrist and couldn't type for nine months).
But my wife pointed out I'm drawing in my wrist, not with my arm, and that can also cause wobbly lines. So I'm going to try the next drawing with a slightly further notebook position and more arm movement. Perhaps the tremors aren't something I have to accept after all. We shall see.
-the Centaur
Moar Goldman studies. Now far into the book enough to start reading his section on tools, which normally I ignore as I have my own preferred methods; but this time, I felt I could see what he was saying. Who knows, maybe I'll actually try some of his pencil methods this time, and not just ink.
-the Centaur
Still working through the Goldman book, which has the inspirational quote: "I hope you wear this book out from overuse!" And that's what you need when you're practicing!
-the Centaur
P.S. My wife and I were talking about learning skills, and she complained that she hadn't quite gotten what she wanted to out of a recent set of books. It occurred to me that there are two situations in which reading books about a skill doesn't help you:
- It can be you haven't yet found the right book, course or teacher that breaks it down in the right way (for me in music, for example, it was "Understanding the Fundamentals of Music" which finally helped me understand the harmonic progression, the circle of fifths, and scales, and even then I had to read it twice).
- It can be because you're not doing enough of the thing to know the right questions to ask, which means you may not recognize the answers when they're given to you.
Both of these are related to Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development - you can most easily learn things that are related to what you already know. Without a body of practice at a skill, reading up on it can sometimes turn into armchair quarterbacking and doesn't help you (and can sometimes even hurt you); with a body of practice, it turns into something closer to an athlete watching game footage to improve their own game.
So! Onward with the drawing. Hopefully some of the drawing theory will stick this time.
More sketches after Ken Goldman's "Drawing Hands and Feet". Generally, when I do construction lines in pencil, then ink it, then erase the lines, it usually comes out much better than when I draw freehand ink. This should not be surprising, but it is something that I need to come back to again and again, given that I am trying to squeeze a new drawing practice into an already packed day.
-the Centaur