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.
Day 206, a sketch of Montgomery Scott from Star Trek:
How ddid I do? Still can't seem to draw a correctly tilted head, and face to hair proportions continue to be off:
Day 207, Nyota Uhura:
Umn, well, it is the same person, sort of, but she's looking down, and the original, up:
So, no real way to make these line up, but it isn't totally terrible:
Day 208, Hikaru Sulu:
Again, more or less the same person, but I made him look down, and what happened to his chin?
Overall comparison cannot be made to line up:
Day 209, Pavel Chekhov. I don't have the original reference on this computer, but I'm sure a comparison would be equally terrible to all the others, if not worsee.
Drawing every day, posting when i get to it.
-the Centaur
The back of Cinnamon Frost, after a painting by my wife. Drawing every day, even if I wasn't posting.
-the Centaur 
Day 200 - Khaaan! Let's see how I did:
Meh. Head not wide enough.
Day 201 - Khan, the man himself:
Day 202 - Spooock!
Let's see how I did:
As I recall, there was no good way to line up the face and the hair.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Day 196: Quick sharpie sketch of Janeway, from the below image.
The comparison is not great - the face is way too long compared to the original:
Day 197, Sharpie over non-repro blue roughs, from the same image:
Slightly better comparison this time, though still not perfect:
Day 198 was Richard Branson ... in spaaace:
That's from this fisheye lens image ... while it isn't perfect, it captures a lot of energy. I particularly like the smile in the reflection (in both my drawing, and in Branson's window - he's having fun!). No comparison this time; this exercise was in capturing the feel more than the precise lineup.
Day 199 was Martin Sheen from The West Wing:
Not an entirely terrible likeness ...
... but my perennial problem of having a face out of proportion to the head continues.
Look at that hair, man. You can make the eyes and mouth line up, but that hair, man.
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur
