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.

End of April and Thoughts

And we have now come to the end of April, and the end of another theme month. Unfortunately, this was not quite so successful of a month when it came to the theme. Due to real life events, I lost steam for the animal theme and made mostly half-hearted attempts at drawing real or imaginary animals. I was, however, successful at drawing every day for the April Drawing challenge, which I'm rather pleased with.

And today begins a new month and a new theme. It will be a tricky one, but I hope that this month will be as enriching as March's plants. May is environments and buildings, which should cover landscapes, building exteriors and interiors, and maybe some stand-alone furnishings.

Here are the remaining April drawings.

April 25 & 26

Just sharing the results of the last couple days (so far).

First is a page of sketches, with some Minnie and Mickey Mouse sketches based on examples for a Walter Foster how-to book.

A pair of swing dance gestures, about 2 minutes each pose. I changed things up a little by referencing from video instead of static pictures (still paused, but catching it in the middle of the action adds some vibrancy to a pose). The source video can be found here.

April 16 to 24

Mix of animals and humans, observation and imagination. Enjoy.

Oh, and I did miss a couple days of animals, but I'm on track for actually drawing something everyday for April. So there's that.

Fuschia, April Drawing day 30

Just sharing the steps for a marker piece I finished today, but started on the 30th.

Initial colored pencil sketch.

Used a lightbox to trace clean lines with a mechanical pencil.

Inked with G-pen and Deleter Black 5.

Copic markers.

April Drawing Days 26-29

April Drawing Days 24-25

A walkthrough of a piece I did based on my friend Becky's steampunk characters, Conn and Odette Lohengrin.

I started with a pencil drawing using a .7mm mechanical lead.

Followed by inking with a Maru pen-nib, so the lines are little more uniform than if I'd used a G-pen. Deleter Black 5 ink.

Final cleaned up inks.

April Drawing, 17-23

April Drawing, So Far...

More than halfway through the month, so high time I updated.

April Drawing: Days 13 and 15

I did draw for days 9-11, but they were mostly sketches and scratch work. I have missed two days, which isn't too bad, all things considered.


Day 13: This was my birthday, a rather laid back affair. I got the inspiration for this piece from an episode of Nova about the history of the telescope.


Day 15: I've got progress for this one. The idea came from today's prompt over at the April Drawing LJ community: Draw a superhero. This could be an existing one or an original character. As it happens, I occasionally get really interested in a piece of entertainment, and this time I'm interested in DC Comics' Power Girl. She's just so much fun and I like characters who have fun and don't take themselves too seriously.

I started with a quick pen sketch done during my office hours while waiting for my students to show up. The pose is pretty simple and straight forward, and captured what I intended to do. I used it for the basis of the polished drawing.

The messy messy drawing. I am a messy artist, preferring to get things down and then refine, especially if it's going to on to being inked. Because I usually go to a lightbox and a clean piece of paper, the drawing can be this messy so long as they aren't too dark. Then I go over with a softer lead to make the final lines stand out.

Final inks. Done with Copic SP Multiliners. I like them, but I need to work on using them and probably play around with the brushpen because the biggest drawback of them is the lack of line variety you get with the multiliners. I like getting some variety with smoothness. I got that here, but had to do it with multiple strokes and my hand isn't all that steady. Need to ink more.

I'll probably color this tomorrow.