April Drawing 22-30 (Daily Markers 285-293)

Another April Drawing has come to a close. This last week was pretty fun.

 Day 22: draw fire. I chose to do a simple candle, and I used some references to get the appearance. A dark background might have helped the effect, but I think it turned out all right.

 Day 23: draw cold atmosphere. A winter lake beneath some mountains.

 Day 24: draw warm atmosphere. In contrast, here's a desert road.

 Day 25: draw liquid (ex. blood, paint). I had in mind a puddle of watercolor paint.

Day 26: use your fav colors. I really like these three colors, B16, B18, and Y08. I probably could have used more colors since the blank white skin makes her look even creepier than I intended. And I'm so rusty at drawing people.

 Day 27: choose three markers blindly, AGAIN! Another drawing with random colors. This time I drew some variations on seaweed and used BG60, BG11, and YR16. For random colors, these went quite well together.

 Day 28: use only colors that end with number 7. For this piece I drew inspiration from starfish. The hardest part was doing the rocks; because I could only use markers that ended in 7, the grays I used blend into each other a bit and the linework is obscured.

Day 29: use cheap markers (prefer non-alcohol ones). I drew a Portuguese man-o'-war for the non-alcohol marker piece. This was a really interesting challenge because I've spent most of the year getting used to alcohol-based markers, namely Copics, and then I had to use a completely different kind. The challenge suggested using non-alcohol markers, so I opted to go with the washable markers that are meant for kids. I got a set of Crayola Super Tips, and boy are the results streaky. I think this is largely because of the paper I used; the Bristol paper probably didn't take the ink the way Crayola intended. I did buy some Crayola paper, and while they aren't on par with the blending I get with Copics, the Crayolas did blend a bit better on the brand paper than the Bristol. Not having a brush tip did not help.

Day 30: do again the challenge piece you were least satisfied with and then compare the two pieces. I wanted to Day 26 again. I did not like how I left her skin blank, which made her look pretty ghastly; also, there was nothing in the prompt that indicated I could only use three colors. So, here are the same colors plus E33 for the skin. Also, I think the drawing is stronger than the original.

April Drawing 16-21 (Daily Markers 279-284)

Well into the second to third week of April Drawing. I admit these were a bit more rushed and not as polished as I would like. A bit more experimentation that didn't go as planned.

 Day 16: draw something metallic. I opted to draw a mug I have. I would like to do more studies of surfaces so I can render them better.

 Day 17: make space/cosmos. An attempt at drawing a galaxy. I tried to use the ABS airbrush system, but I realized after the fact I'd hooked up the air can incorrectly, hence why the attempts at airbrushing the black (and using the marker itself) looks so shoddy.

 Day 18: use colored paper (non white). I used some warm paper in a sketchbook I've had for a while to do a dogfish, which is related to sharks. It's a challenge to use markers on colored paper because some colors don't show up and merely darken the page, while others look different compared to white paper. Another thing to play with more.

 Day 19: draw stone/crystal.

 Day 20: draw fur. An attempt at a furry rabbit. Much more splotchy than I'd intended. I used some colorless blender to add some texture and a colored pencil to add more fur direction.

Day 21: draw water. A puddle.

April Drawing: Daily Markers 271-278

Second week of April Drawing, days 271-278 for the daily marker drawings, and still going strong. This week saw further movement away from the marine theme of the first week, and it looks like that this may be the end of that theme for now.

 Day 8: choose blindly two colors. These were chose chosen blindly, and while they were complimentary colors (good because complimentaries work well together), they had to be the boldest and most garish of contrasts you could get. Such blinding colors! Anyway, the picture is based on a triggerfish.

 Day 9: use only 00, 000, and 0000 markers. In Copic's coloring system, 00s are usually the lightest color in each color family and are usually pretty pale. Over time, the company has added 000s and 0000s to some of the families because there are times people really want to go even paler and lighter than the original 00s (some artists will even create paler color mixes because all you need is the color ink and a lot of colorless blender, so I'd imagine there are some really pale custom colors out there). This was a pretty pale picture, but "pale" can be relative. This flying fish may use light colors, but it harmonizes pretty well and looks pretty nice.

 Day 10: color skin without using any E, R, or YR colors. Many, if not most or all, artists use combinations of certain Es, Rs, and YRs because they fall in the ranges for human skin colors. One could probably create a very human looking skin tones without them, but I opted to do a mermaid (yep, that's a merMAID). I chose to keep the pale colors I'd pulled from the previous day's challenge.

 Day 11: redraw one of your old Copic works. I chose to redraw the sun witch from Inktober 2016, mostly because it just barely counts as a Copic image (no color was applied, but it was drawn with Copic multiliners). I opted to do a mid-range image and use colors for this version.

 Day 12: shade white clothing without using any gray tones. One does not need to use gray to shade white; pretty much any pale or appropriate saturation color will do. I used a light blue to attempt to shade the dress. More volume and form knowledge (and fashion) would help this one.

 Day 13: color ombre hair or clothing. I had to look up "ombre"; it pretty much means "gradation." I forgot it was supposed to be clothing, so let's pretend it's a cord or ribbon.

 Day 14: use at least 10 colors. A lineless drawing of an area of sea floor.

Day 15: use only markers. No lineart. Once again I used sea jellies for the piece. No lineart at all, not even a preliminary sketch. Jellies work well with that approach. Used three RV markers for the piece.

Daily Markers 264-270: April Drawing 1-7

April rolls around again, which means it's time for another round of the April Drawing Challenge. The daily challenge is now almost a norm for me, but I still enjoy participating in the prompts for the community or doing my own thing; either way, I like sharing my art with others who are doing the challenge for improvement, fun, or both.

A marine theme kinda happened for this week, and I plan to keep with it as much as I can. However, I am also using the artist Sadyna's 30-day marker challenge, and some of them are meant for human or humanoid subjects (like clothes). I'm rather pleased with what I've come up with for the first week.

 Day 1: Use only one color. I started with a drawing of a Siamese fighting/Betta fish. I drew inspiration from the tradition in the April Drawing community to draw fish (based on French pun about April Fools' and fish). The only color used was V06.

 Day 2: Choose blindly three colors. I started with the drawing first, and I drew inspiration from the many different kinds of sea slugs or nudibranchs in real life. This one was from imagination. The colors were blindly chose by mom: B02, E74, and R37.

 Day 3: Use only gray tones. I drew this tiger shark using only warm grays for the shark and cool grays for the background.

 Day 4: Use complementary colors. I could use any kind of complementary combination, but I was thinking of how pleasant an earlier drawing of sea jelly/jellyfish was, so I went with oranges (Y and YR) for the sponges and B24 for the sea around it.

 Day 5: Use only markers' wide tip end. This is a scaly foot gastropod, a kind of sea snail. I might come back to this one because I wanted to get a more chiseled or scaly appearance for the scales on the foot.

 Day 6: Use only one color family. Inspired by an image I found (but not based on it), I decided to draw a pink seahorse, so the color family I chose was RV.

Day 7: Use markers that end with number 3. These jellyfish were drawn while I was out of town, so I wanted to keep it relatively simple. But I did attempt to draw two kinds of sea jellies. These were all drawn with markers that ended in 3 (ex. RV23 or YG13). A pretty good end for the first week of drawings.

Daily Markers: Days 250-263

March ends another month of my one-year marker challenge, and it ends with me just over 100 days away from the end. Yeah, I've decided I'm going to probably stop the public daily challenge because I'm getting a bit burned out (I plan to continue doing daily drawings for practice and working towards pieces). Anyway! The last two weeks include the proper 250th drawing and more work using the Strathmore 400 Series marker paper.

I did a simple fanart drawing of the masks the Daughters of Aku where in season five of Samurai Jack. I would like to do more fanart from the series, and the season continues the series' tradition of gorgeous art, so there's a lot draw upon.

 A simple, quick picture for the first day of spring. Used a brush pen for the lines.

 The Magic Mirror from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is another subject I want to come back to, namely drawing the Evil Queen and Snow White. I want to do more Disney fanart and kinda work through the animated canon.

As for the pic itself, this was a fun challenge. First, I had to find good references for the frame of the mirror and had to pick and choose the most consistent parts. I had fun working out how to do the spirit's face. In the original movie stills, near as I can tell, the forehead grades pretty smoothly into the upper cheeks and nose. I am pleased with how I was able to get the gradation and getting it rather smooth. The blackness of the mirror background helped to pull the face's colors together.

 A quick pic of a green lady elf-fae being. I played a little with using some pink for undertones on the cheeks, nose, and shoulders. It didn't blend as well as I wanted, but it helps to keep it from being too monotone.

 A bit of a humorous self portrait. Sometimes the ideas don't come. So I drew myself trying to brainstorm something.

A pawn

For the last week I chose to do some fanart of Sailor Moon; when all else fails, fall back on fanart of the classics.

I opted to do those referred to the Inner Scouts/Senshi and Sailor Chibi Moon. For this series I wanted to play with using colored lines for most of the portraits, except for black for the eyes; depending on the color, I used a combination of Pigma Microns and Copic Multiliners. I was inspired a piece of Sailor Moon fanart by Chihiro Howe that used blue lines, as well as other pieces in her overall work. Using colored inks add a different look to a piece than what you would get from using black. Depending on the color and application, I think it can soften the line art once the color is added. The black being used for the eyes helps to draw attention to them.

Over the course of the series, however, I ran into a recurring problem and a gripe I have with the paper. You can see it in many of the above pieces, but especially with Sailor Moon's, the ink for the line art tended to smudge. I'm not sure if it was because the ink wasn't thoroughly dried or just the nature of the paper, but it was frustrating for the ink to get picked up by the marker and ruining an otherwise fine picture. I understood for the portions where the ink was applied much more strongly, such as under the neck, but it seemed to be worse around the nose and lips. Maybe I need to let it dry longer or apply less before coloring.

And there were some problems with Sailor Chibi Moon's image. Short answer: refilled a maker a bit to much and it was too juicy, hence blotting. If you want to see the original before my fixes, you can see it here.

And that's it for this month. April is here, which means time for the April Drawing Challenge. I've done pretty well for the last couple of years. I'll continue with the marker challenge, but I'll be using Sadyna's 30-day marker challenge prompt list for inspiration.