Good Enough is Enough

These are all drawn from the same photo reference.



Still claiming this for drawesome's "scribble art" prompt, but can I claim double points for revisiting last month's "negative space" prompt? Scribble art and negative space go really well together.

The July prompt for drawesome is "Scribble Art" so you can expect a lot of posts from me this month. Scribbling is totally my thing.




Also, I just rediscovered a sketchbook I'd misplaced after only filling up a handful of pages and I'm in love with it. Why did I set this sketchbook aside? I'd sort of dismissed it as being too small and had only planned to use it as a "travel" sketchbook (except I'm terrible about putting things in my bag and forgetting I have them and never using them). Somehow I hadn't even noticed how this sketchbook opens up flat so I can draw across two pages effectively doubling the size of each page.

Yet another drawing for the "Fresh Eyes" practice from Love Life Drawing (which I will again co-opt and claim counts toward the "negative space" prompt for drawesome.)

Here's the photo of the paper model compared to the finished marker drawing.

I don't know why, but I'm enjoying messing around with the cheapest art supplies. I've got a handful of Copic markers and quite a few more Blick (basically Copic knock-offs) and I stress out about using up too much of the expensive ink. I do not stress out at all about ruining my Mr. Sketch markers. So even though they are objectively worse markers, I enjoy the process of using them more.



As you can see, it's very easy to knock the paper model out of alignment, so it's kind of a pain. If I planned to do this much longer, I'd think about gluing the pieces to a rougher cardstock (like I could even see the benefit of having them backed with rubber or felt or something else that didn't slide easily). However, I think the whole point of this practice is that when I've done a few (ten?) practice sessions, I'm supposed to just see the proportions in my head without messing with the fiddly bits anymore.

Anyway, I'm still on day "one" because I'm lazy and also I keep getting distracted wasting unnecessary time with digital edits.



As usual, I can never quite decide which of these is my favorite, but I'm kind of fond of...( this annoying blinking version that I'll hide behind a cut )

Perhaps for full "negative space" credit, I need to remove the skeletal frame.


I should probably mention that the original photograph that I was trying to reproduce was a normal human man stretching to the side. But I did something with the neck that made the shoulders look all hunched up and the bend in the torso is weird and what I ended up with just screamed "alien zombie" to me.

For all the time I spent playing around with digital edits, I'm still kind of fond of the plain original marker drawing.

I've done some cool things with negative space before so this month's drawesome prompt should be right up my alley. I feel a little meh about this first attempt though. The proportions are off, the composition is terrible, there was no plan at all with the color scheme.

I've been saying for ages that I want to practice my figure drawing and I think this a good exercise to do it with, so hopefully I'll get one or two more done soon and have something else to post.

(I need to dig around and see if I can find any of those older drawings with negative space that I think were cool.)

This is using the same reference as the other day, but rotated to a different angle.

I'm thinking of giving myself a break from realism and trying out cartoon-y hands soon, but I've already started one more "realistic" sketch where I'm trying to draw my own hand (but in the same basic pose that I've been practicing for the last couple of days). It's... meh. I don't hate it but hands are right up there with cats on the list of things that are hard to draw.

The drawesome art prompt this month is to draw your hand. This is always something I say I'm going to practice, but I so rarely do.

I should do dozens and dozens of hand studies to try to improve. But. I think because I'm never satisfied with how they turn out, I'm not motivated to keep drawing them even though the reason they don't turn out great is that I don't practice enough.

More art spam. This is a sloppy digital edit because I'm on my Chromebook and I'm literally too lazy to walk six feet to my left and sit down at the better computer.

This is mainly just proof-of-concept anyway. I wanted to just get a general idea of whether I liked how these look colored in digitally. And... the verdict is... I remain completely undecided. There are pros and cons to markers versus digital editing.

Clicky to embiggen...



Draw So Cute has this whole thing with adorable anthropomorphic food and I have no idea why drawing eyes on food is so cute, but it is.

This was about the time I was deciding I don't like this sketchbook though. It's advertised as being for markers, but all the marker drawings have come out streaky and uneven.

Does anyone have a preference for whether I post thumbnails or larger images? Part of me thinks small thumbnails look cleaner on the page, but also that having to click on them is one step too much work to ask people to do. :-)

This is another one adapted from a "Draw So Cute" video without really looking much like the original. (I don't know the inspiration, but it sounded like it's from a cartoon series or a game or a doll or something.) I just thought the hair would be fun.

I've decided I hate the current sketchbook, so I'm setting the goal of powering through and filling it up by the end of the month so I can justify buying a different one. (I actually have several sketchbooks that I need to finish up before I can justify buying a new one.)