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.

April Drawing: Days 6, 7, & 8

I've been drawing, I just take forever to scan my drawings in. The last couple of days I was in a funk but started to get out of it a little bit yesterday.

Day 6 This was inspired by a scene in a short story I wrote for the steampunk fairy tale universe Becky and I have been playing with. It's supposed to be my Red Riding Hood pilot, but not too pleased with it. I'll come back to some time later.


Day 7 This was from a Walter Foster How to Draw book, namely Lilo and Stitch. No, it's not scanned upside down. I tend to fall back on some exercises in Betty Edward's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain when I get in a funk or I'm rusty. I like to use images with clean lines, so I took advantage of the WF book.


Day 8 Tonight was also the last night for the portrait drawing class I mentioned in earlier posts. The model was lit from below, and that was enough for me to shift gears enough to get a satisfactory image. Probably my best portrait from the whole class.

April Drawing: Days 4 and 5

Yesterday's challenge was stick figures, so I took advantage of it to do some thumbnails. Today's art were three pages of 30 sec. gestures. I need to work on doing more, getting past a block.
Day 4


Day 5

April Drawing: Days 1 and 2

It's that month again, April, and that means April Drawing is going on. The rules are the same as last time; try to draw something everyday for the month of April. That's it.

Day one: Portrait
Not much to say about this. From my portrait drawing class. I worked the longest on the middle head,  but the model kept moving his head slightly, so things kept getting off. I eventually went to doing studies.

Day two: 30 sec. Gestures

Portrait Class Day 2

Second night of the portrait classes. I think there was some improvement, but this time around I could not get the eyes. I tried a few times but they just would not look right. Hope to work on that in the future. Other than that, pretty good.

Portrait Class and Disney Princess #2

Got two pieces to show this time. The first is my first attempt at a portrait from the portrait drawing class I'm taking part in. This was what I got done over 20 minutes; we took a break and I decided to start fresh with a new sheet. Yeah, didn't get too far with the second one, I'm afraid. Still, I think I was off to a good start.

Next is the second of my Disney Princess ACEOs, Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Not the greatest, and I don't mind. This one was also suggested to me by an online friend from the CA.org forums, BlackSpot. I think we're in agreement that Aurora is not a fave of the princesses. I mean, c'mon! She knows nothing about Maleficent and she doesn't even prick her finger on her own! (You could argue that she did, but my view of the evidence is she's zoned out)

Not as pleased as I am with Jasmine, but okay overall. As you'll note, went with her Briar Rose outfit. Why? Because the ballgown is overused, and this goes for all the princesses. So don't expect any of them to be in the ballgowns or princessy outfits.

Disney Princesses 1: Jasmine

Having a bit of fun and giving myself a challenge: do one Disney Princess ACEO card a day. Challenge is to finish something every day, and because artist cards are so small, you don't have to work hard to cover a lot of canvas space.

The first one I did is Jasmine from Aladdin, who was suggested to me by my friend Becky. I think this is the first time I've ever tried drawing a real picture of her (previous attempts were out of a Walter-Foster How-to-Draw book on the Disney Princesses); I think I made her hair a bit big, probably the usual mistakes one makes when drawing her. Other than that, I think I did okay.

Materials: Bristol vellum trading cards, Copic multiliners and Sketch markers.

"Drosselmeyer" Walkthrough

Just a walkthrough of piece of fanart done to illustrate a prompt for Club-Tutu over at DeviantArt. It's a character spotlight, and the first character we're looking at is Drosselmeyer. I wanted to do a piece that showed off how cruel he can be, but never directly, and how much he enjoys seeing people suffer. I had done some more advanced thumbnails, but I ignored them and went with a very simple close-up of Drosselmeyer doing the bad guy steepled hands.

It went pretty easily. I simply looked at some designs materials I had on my computer and went from there. The hardest part was figuring out how to do the hands. Quick Google search and search on dA found nothing. Thank gods for a webcam; if you can't find it, make it.

First rough pencil sketch

Inks (Copic multiliner)

Finished colors (PS CS3)

Feed Me!

A pair of follow-up images to "Somewhere That's Green." This time, Autor as Seymour with raven!Audrey II during "Feed Me (Get It)." The first is the first attempt at it, which comes off more Autor than Seymour, and didn't have the humor I wanted the image to have. Still, a good image that's worth sharing.

Below is the final version that I went with and has the humor I wanted. Something about having Audrey II yelling at Seymour was funny to me.

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Hopefully, I can get back to daily drawings. Trying to work on that grand jette drawing some. These are mostly me using Mark Simon's Facial Expressions in order to work on, well, faces. I haven't drawn faces from ref much lately. That's something I'm going to work on.