everyone's a critic

[eye_of_toad]

This is my roommate's cat expressing her opinion of my sketching.



The Drawesome Prompt this month was "Draw What You See" and I had to cheat and give up and take a photograph of my still life of junk and finish sketching it in my room. (After the walking-on-sketchbook and sitting-on-sketchbook, there was an active attempt to eat my pencil which is when I gave up.) I did do all the initial sketching and outline in person at least.



I was really excited about this prompt and had fantasies of doing a daily drawing this month. Drawing what's in front of you seems perfect for that sort of thing.

However, as usual, I put it off and put it off until suddenly it was the end of the month and I hadn't done a thing so I sketched this out quickly.

I did a pencil test up in the corner comparing a Faber-Castell Pitt Graphite Matt #14B with a simple Blick #6B and I don't see that the "14" is darker as such, but the matt pencil definitely is less shiny than the standard one. (I also started to do this with a blue colored pencil and quickly abandoned that idea due to the lack of contrast.)

This still feels a bit unfinished, but I'm giving up on it. Everything is all out of proportion and wrong and so I'm not motivated to make it pretty.

I really do need to spend a whole month practicing drawing from real life. It's so much harder than drawing from a photograph or imagination.

Comments

[senmut]

It looks good. Don't listen to the cat.

drawing the real world

[eye_of_toad]

Thanks! I deliberately picked some tricky shapes for the challenge, but it was still way harder than I expected. I really need to practice this skill more often.

[adafrog]

lol Cats.
Looks nice.

[meridian_rose]

Graat work, despite kitty's best attempts to scupper you!

[mific]

Love it - the Rubik's cube is especially 3D, and bonus cat butt FTW!

cubes

[eye_of_toad]

Thanks! I was trying to do the Draw-a-Box lessons and was already annoyed before I got to the "draw 250 boxes" challenge. (There's good information in the free course, but I don't like how prescriptive it is about how you can only use a certain kind of pen and you have to do everything a certain kind of way.) And I think I'd be happy to draw 250 boxes if they were boxes but the rules have you drawing all the edges of your rectangular prism as if it were see-through and it's so ugly when you do that. So I got stubborn and started drawing Rubik's cubes instead and ... yikes ... I think I invented an even harder challenge for myself. I may just go back to the easier ugly boxes after all.

[goss]

Nice work! Great job on the perspective for the cube especially. :D :D

[amberdreams]

Procrastinators Unite! Well, maybe tomorrow. 😂

Practice is key though, that's for sure. That and letting go of the need to be accurate in every detail. I feel your pain!

letting go

[eye_of_toad]

Yeah, I watch videos of people drawing photorealistic art and it just doesn't look fun. The fun part is the new idea and then I want to get it done as quickly as possible so that I can move on to the next fun idea.

[mekare]

Good job and I laughed at your rommate's cat's sabotage attempts.

cat

[eye_of_toad]

Yeah, I've lived here for two years and she's still very much the roommate's cat only. I am "human who will be tolerated".