Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
When first I tackled the "Dragons and Fantasy" book I thought I'd skip over the iterative sketches and just do the final drawings, but it's actually been helpful to work through the sketches one by one, learning how the artist (nom de pinceau "Kythera") breaks down sketches.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More sketchy-sketch from "Dragons & Fantasy".
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More exercises from "The Artist's Guide to Pen and Ink."
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Yes, highly sketchy ... but the point here is to teach me the skills to thumbnail and sketch incomplete works without me diving so deep into trying to make things perfect the first time.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Sketchwork for a commission for Thinking Ink Press (the cover of "An Original Use of Magic").
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Loosening up and pen-learning exercises. Yes, I count these: if I fill a page, it gets a number.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Going back to basics to work on my linework - an exercise from The Artist's Guide to Pen and Ink, if I remember correctly.
And, yes, I've been drawing every day, just not posting them while I was in convention season.
-the Centaur
i don't know. sure feels like it's over.
Technically speaking, I have 2 more weeks of "convention season" left - the lead-up to Clockwork Alchemy remains, where I'm on 3 or 4 panels, and am also taking my wife and a couple friends to see the Rush 50 Something tour - but the hard part, Dragon Con and Worldcon and the associated Worldcon Academic paper and the fall-from-the-sky Frontiers in Robotics paper edits - are over.
I am so glad I had built up a month and a half of buffer for Drawing Every Day, as I'm still a week ahead.
More in a bit, now that "the Submarine" has surfaced ...
-the Centaur
Pictured: Me mugging at lunch before taking my wife to the airport, just after a wonderful 20th anniversary trip to Asheville, North Carolina.
More thigh-to-leg studies from Morpho.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Still more "Morpho: Simplified Forms". There are roughly 100 pages in the book and 5-8 drawings on most of the pages, so we may be churning through this one for quite a while.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More studies from "Morpho: Simplified Forms".
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Another study of the thigh in relation to the rest of the body.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
On the note of unblogged posts, here's picking up my missed posts from 2025 - day 68 I believe was the last one I blogged, not counting one or two done out of order.
Drawing every day, backfilling when I can.
-the Centaur
Unblogged torso study from day 1 of this year. Well, actually, this was drawn in September, since I draw pretty far ahead; but it's the drawing scheduled for January 1st.
Drawing every day, on average, backfilling missed posts, when I can.
-the Centaur
Kind of a foreshortened view.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Yet another thigh proportion study from "Morpho: Simplfiied Forms."
-the Centaur
Another study from "Morpho: Simplified Forms".
-the Centaur
A re-draw of the cover of The Lexicon of Comicana by Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey. I picked this up on a trip to San Francisco for the Game Developer's Conference, and drew this in a coffee house attached to a Books Inc (now owned by Barnes and Noble) ... maybe this one. Can't remember if I found this book at that Books Inc or at nearby Russian Hill Bookstore, but I think it was the BI on Van Ness next to the Peet's, where I chose to draw after buying the book.
-the Centaur
I started to write "drawing DETRACTS from writing" but that's not true at all: I just finished a couple of drawings for THE LEGACY OF THE EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT that helped me understand my own characters - and now I've drawn all of the core six characters signed up for the Project. So drawing doesn't detract ... but it certainly can subtract from the time you'd spend on another endeavor.
Our heroes Q'yagon and Darina I most recently used Midjourney reference for, but I had previously drawn them myself; but now, without reference, I have drawn sketches of the stoneskin healer Orieos and his birchbark ranger squeeze Berrybelle, as well as Berrybelle's fire mage brother Sapforte and his ice dragon familiar, Frostthorne. All six are now rendered by my own hand!
But, normally, the Drawing Every Day project has relatively simple drawings - several of which have appeared recently, so you can see what I mean. But at the start and finish of every notebook, I do a more detailed drawing of ... SOMETHING ... related to my writing or comics, and those take longer.
Orieos and Berrybelle finished out a DED notebook (this one from Blick art supply, pictured above) and Sapforte and Frostthorne started a new one (not pictured). O&B took an hour; S&F took three.
In that time, I could have written 500 to 1500 words (more, or less, depending on inspiration and orientation to the text) or made progress on the Logical Robotics Harness, or done work on the FROST MOON re-release or the LCATS project.
But even though I could have spent those four hours writing ... I'm happy with the result.
So even though drawing (and blogging!) subtract from writing time, I'm glad I do them.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Just the notebook, as the drawings are for days 250-251, and we're only at DOY 164.
More from Morpho's book of "simplified forms".
Drawing every day.*
-the Centaur
*on average, or better.
