Good Enough is Enough

Still haven't quite figured out what to do with the pastel ink. The lack of contrast is very limiting.



As much as I love color, I always gravitate back to plain black ink because of the high contrast. Also the black ink bleeds the strongest when I go for a watercolor effect.

The "caramel" is definitely shaping up to be a strong second-favorite. I don't think I've posted a before-and-after in awhile. The only difference between these the two following drawings is the application of water with a brush.




I'm thinking of posting that last one to drawesome as I think it's a valid fit for the "negative space" prompt and a close-enough fit for the "scribble art" prompt. (I'm still not sure I've achieved the proper spirit of that prompt as I'm not really using the scribbles as a shading effect and I think the goal is crosshatching-but-loopy instead of just messy chaos... but "messy chaos" is the closest thing I have to a style so... yeah.) Actually, now that I'm staring at it, I think there's room for more shadowy ghouls in the background, so I might not be done with this one yet.

Here's another candidate to post for two different drawesome prompts. I've got another skull in my other sketchbook though (post coming soon) and I can't decide which one I like better. And there's still plenty of time to make another attempt before the end of the month. (Skulls are a bit of an obsession because I never quite feel like I've got it right, but even when they come out wrong they still look kind of cool.)

And apples are just my classic "I can't think of what to draw" object.

I'm also in the process of cleaning up the tags in my old posts so that things will be a little more organized when I want to refer back to something else. (You can imagine how unhelpful it was when I was labeling everything "art" or "sketchbook 2022".)

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.)