Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
Yes it will. Though it may be a while, the entire point of Drawing Every Day is to restore my confidence in my drawing so I can resume my webcomics.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Part of Xiao's work outfit from her summer job, resting atop Xiao's supercomputer.
When I sat down to draw today, I realized I'd never filled in the frontispiece and first page of my sketchbook because I was intimidated. SO! I set out to overcome that today. What you see above is as good as I can reproduce this without actually running it through a scanner - I am currently capturing these drawings by photographing them with my phone and then Photoshopping them into shape, not because I'm opposed to scanners, but because I'm trying to eliminate sources of friction that might prevent me from drawing and blogging the drawings every single day. Below is a closer picture of what the original looked like:
The red of the notebook front makes it hard to scan, but I think you get the gist. I used to do this with all my notebooks, but when I broke my arm (almost two decades ago now!) it broke my confidence, and eventually I stopped doing it. But the solution is to keep doing it - and to carve out enough time to draw so you have the time to do it, and not to feel bad about the time you have to take to do it.
Drawing every day, and getting confident enough at it to personalize my notebooks.
-the Centaur
Xiao, the protagonist of my stalled webcomic f@nu fiku, out for a jog.
More Goldman studies. Interesting how complex the foot is - in some ways, even more so than the hand, though that its deceptive (the hand's quasi-regular structure contributes to its flexibility).
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Quick sketch from Goldman, with the relevant tendons photoshoped in with blue. It says foot muscles, but that was just the title of the section; the blue itself is are tendons in different states of flex.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Late, tired, bed - but I feel like things are getting back on track, with Nano and Drawing Every Day up to date.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Outta time, and my notebook wasn't even on me. So you get a quick Photoshop sketch. Real drawing resumes once Camp Nano is over.
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Even more feet. Now back on track for drawing every day.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
The drawing I should have posted yesterday. Gonna keep up that average rate no matter what.
Drawing every day, with occasional catch-ups.
-the Centaur
Drawing every day. Counting this as one day behind until I get caught up.
-the Centaur
Okay, technically, this is Photoshoppery, and not a drawing, but it is my art, and it is 2:41am, and I would like to simultaneously announce that if we make $20K on our Kickstarter, we're definitely doing a sequel anthology, and also to announce that I'm very behind on Camp Nano, so I am going to bed.
One thing to note on this (which is composed of our existing art, plus public domain NASA images) is that it can take a variety of different layered images to create the above effect. I cut the original cover artwork into three different pieces to create the original backdrop, and added two more (with 50% opacity erasure of the edges to make the starfields blur together). The stars needed a similar treatment (that's two copies of the binary stars, tilted to make the swooshies work well, which themselves also had to be faded). The cover itself had some filters applied to make the art look like something, but a nonspecific something.
Lots of techniques. Real drawing resumes tomorrow - two of them, to keep up drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Focusing on WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY, so here's a quick sketch. It started out as a rando, but I think it evolved into one of the "big three" characters from f@nu fiku---I think this was The Warrior.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Interestingly, not the same as the previous drawing (see below) - another drawing from the same page, which seems like it might be on the opposite side of the foot, as the tarsals are laid out differently.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Drawn aaalmost completely from memory ... I could see a blurry image of the previous day's drawing through the previous sheet in my notebook ... but this time, with construction lines to help guide me.
I think it turned out far better than the previous effort, even though elements of the previous drawing were more accurate to the original photograph.
You start off drawing what you think you see, then move to drawing what's there. But at some point you should transition beyond that to drawing what will make the viewer see what you saw, which is not necessarily the same as replicating what a camera would have seen in the place of your two eyes.
Drawing every day, even when flying.
-the Centaur
As it says on the tin (well, in the title, and in the word balloon): we went hiking, and now we're heading out for date night. You get a real drawing tomorrow.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Woke up at 2:45 am realizing I hadn't drawn today. Same idea as two days ago, informed by the comic-book style from one day ago, but done in a consciously cartoony style that abstracts away the details, like a Bill Holbrook drawing. I like how it turned out, though it isn't a substitute for planning for success.
The drawing at the top took not much longer than the drawing at the bottom left, even though it looks way more like the drawing at the bottom right.
Drawing every day, even if I've forgotten to.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Cinnamon. It took about as long to draw this one
Technically, still a quick sketch, but this shows the difference between drawing in the late evening at a leisurely pace set by the drawing, and drawing at 2am at a pace set by exhaustion.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Literally fell asleep twice trying to finish the blogging today before I got to the drawing, here's as fast a sketch as I could do of Cinnamon, goodnight.
-the Centaur
Super quick sketch since Clockwork Alchemy is tomorrow.
Drawing every day, even if I don't have time to.
-the Centaur
Pictured: super quick sketch of Jeremiah.
Got interrupted twice when finishing this drawing - once when I tried to finish it before the trip, and the second time when the plane landed and I had to pack up. So, it is what it is. Might tackle this one again.
Drawing every day is a discipline. I wish I was better at that.
-the Centaur
SO! Our Kickstarter for the Neurodiversiverse is live at neurodiversiverse.com (which just links through to the Kickstarter page for the duration of the campaign). And I'm proud to say that we are number one of projects if you search for neurodivergence!
For this project I had to create about fifty images in Photoshop - mostly by remixing other imagery we had, admittedly, but sometimes it took a bit of cleverness to make everything work out, as in this physical picture of most of our books and flash fiction postcards - not all of which I had on hand for the picture, and some of which don't even physically exist yet, like the softback of The Neurodiversiverse:
Liza and I (with the help of Betsy and Keiko) put a lot of time into this and I'm proud of the result:
So, please check it out and back us ... we have reward tiers everything from $1 for token support, to early bird ebooks at a discount, to the book and the ebook themselves, all the way up to getting your name listed in the acknowledgements at the back of the book:
And, while I hope to get in some real drawing today, I am unabashedly using this as my Drawing Every Day post, because I spent hours and hours on art today and that should count, dang it.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
