Good Enough is Enough

I forgot to include this one in my sketchbook #2 post.

This was for a character-creation challenge with the prompt "Queen of Magma".



I really liked how this turned out but when I took a picture of it, it just didn't seem dark enough to convey what I was going for, so I darkened it digitally and enhanced the magma in the eye.

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.

Every month when the new drawesome prompt comes out, I imagine myself spending the whole month doing a ton of sketches and the next thing I know it's the end of the month and I haven't done anything since the initial "practice" drawaing.

I liked the idea of a menacing mermaid and really meant to do more with this, but...

This started out all in marker (and the mermaid is all marker with perhaps a little colored pencil, I don't remember) but I just gave up on the background and slapped a digital filter on it.

Not terribly fond of how this one turned out. The coloring is all wrong and while I could spend more time fighting with the markers to get it right, I don't think it's worth the bother. Katara is such a cool character and this style doesn't do her justice so this is about all the time I plan to spend on it.


(Already on season 3 "Fire" at this point.)

The digital edit might be a slight improvement, but I'm still not that keen on it.




And then I did this tonight.



Should I color this one in?

EDIT: colored in with markers (I don't like how this sketchbook handles marker at all)
I'm still not sure which version I prefer. I like the idea of the color, but I didn't execute it well.

What do you think, is it worth cropping the background out?

Should I play around with digital coloring or leave it black-n-white?

I have no creativity lately, so nearly everything I'm drawing in this sketchbook is copied by one or another of my favorite "how to draw" YouTube channels aimed at kids. (Draw So Cute and Art for Kids Hub) If you call them "studies" it's not plagiarism, right?

So these are my "children's illustration studies". (Or if I'm being honest, this is my art therapy. Sometimes I just want to make pretty pictures without having to think too much about it.)