I honestly viewed this blog as a way to force myself to do the chore of getting to a point in art where I could draw my armored unicorns fighting spaceships and move on. However, It's becoming so much more than that. I've learned a very important lesson, and although I wished I learned it earlier, I'm really excited to be moving through it now. That lesson is firstly, basics are king, and you're never too good for them. The second part of this lesson I'd really like to stress, viewing it as a chore was a horrifying way of thinking, and doubly so, I 'm happy to move past that self defeating state of mind.
When I did the painting for my last post, it was to take a break from a bigger painting I'd been teasing for a bit. But as the lesson I've been learning goes(and sadly had learned in college but ignored), was that detailed crap is still crap, and 20 hours later, I abandoned it. That's when I decided to gear this learning process in one fundamental direction, basics first.
Gestures are definitely a defining point because if the gesture is bad, the structure following it will not make the drawing any better, nor will the anatomy layered on top of that and nor will the clothing, laser guns and helmets on that. Taking it a step further, neither will its paint job. So simply ignoring the first step, which takes all of 20 seconds, you can spend 20 hours to finally realize you made a fundamental error, and it was all pointless.
A lot of old advice has been flooding into my cranium lately, mostly from my friend over at Chroma Sketch. The biggest of which was to read Walt Stanchfield's notes. I'm happy to say I picked up a copy of "Drawn to Life" last week. It's beyond awesome and very inspiring.
I'm really starting to understand that this is a lifestyle, and to be great at art you really have to live it. Between gestures, anatomy studies, and just observing more, I can really see the huge benefits that will come from this. I understand now that although my goal has always been to create cool sci fi and fantasy characters/environments, that in between, I must, and will enjoy a regiment of practice to keep my skills sharp, and my visual library primed and ready to go!
So ending this long winded thought, drawings! The are all from coffee shops minus the nudes, which came from stock I found on characterdesigns.com (I can only afford so many drinks haha).
I admit as a whole these are a bit touch and go, but I'm having a lot of fun trying to drop my bad habits and work towards the ideal point of the exercise.
Lastly there are a few I did that aren't gestures but I'm putting up anyways. Obviously gestures are a means to an end, and another part of that is anatomy, structure, aesthetic etc. So when I was trying to wrap my head around a collar, I ended up drawing this. I only bring it up because I think the relaxed demeanor of the pose is a bi-product of the gestures, since I usually end up with something stiff and lifeless. But I like it stylistically, and I'd like to play more with drawing like this in the future.
This second one here is a quick study I did of lips since I've been having a bit of an issue with them, especially in 3/4. This is part of a larger effort to do more anatomy studies, primarily focused on facial expressions. I've started doing a lot more, but here's the start.
