June 1-10

Mermay has passed, and I decided to pretty much go freeform for the remainder of my art challenge year. Partly due to an upcoming trip, I decided that if I am going to follow a theme, it would be some Disney animation fanart.

I started June following that pattern, generally following the chronological appearances of the Classic Five (or Six if you count Daisy Duck as I did). Part of the reason I chose to start with the classic shorts characters is because I would be out of town and not have access to my whole collection. Since most of the classic group and a predecessor came from the black and white era, that worked out great. Eventually, I did get to color.

 I started with the first star for Walt Disney, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I've come to really like the character since I heard his history, and I was able to get a DVD collection of the found Disney 12. Oswald really is pretty endearing. So, first honors go to him.

 Next would be Mickey Mouse. For the rest of the group I was able to follow a pattern of their chronological appearances and drew upon the shorts they starred in. Mickey's picture draws upon his first cartoon, which is actually "Plane Crazy," not "Steamboat Willie," at least production wise. Here is the Mouse in his plane from the short.

 Next is Minnie Mouse. I could have drawn from "Plane Crazy" like I did for Mickey, but I decided to play with the pattern a bit and go with one of the next ones, which is "Steamboat Willie."

 I also skipped a short for Pluto; he first technically appeared as one of the bloodhounds from "Chain Gang," but I didn't much care for how the dogs looked in that one, and it was hard to find a good pose to reference that captured Pluto for me. I opted to go with his next appearance, which is "The Picnic," where is he Minne's dog "Rover," but he has already started to look more like the Pluto the Dog we're familiar with.

 Next up is probably my fave of the Classic Five/Six, Goofy. Well, this is his first appearance from "Mickey's Revue" where he was called "Dippy Dawg." You may know that he doesn't become the Goof we know until later shorts. Here he is beginning his infamous laugh at the show, to the annoyance of the rest of the audience.

 Our penultimate character is the duck with a temper, Donald Duck from "The Wise Little Hen." And it's the first one that is in color!

 And the last character for the list is Daisy Duck from the short "Don Donald." I love her already apparent sass in the short. I kinda had to go with one her first poses from the start of the short.

While I intended to go straight to some of the feature films, I got a bit intimidating. I was planning to draw Snow White and the Evil Queen/Hag from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (separate drawings), but I have been feeling rusty with drawing more accurately human characters. That is something I will need to work on as I go forward over the next couple of months if I want to resume the theme. So, the next two are simpler images.

And the last image of this batch comes back to the start. By chance I'd found a video on YouTube from the Disney Parks channel on how to draw Oswald. I pretty much did the rough sketch along with the video before filling in the lines and darks with a black Copic.

Mermay Days 29-31

May comes to a close, and with it Mermay. Another successful challenge month completed!

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.

Daily Markers 249 & 250: Willi and Ida

I have a month's worth of pictures to scan. I'm still going strong with the daily marker drawings, up to Number 250 today. I wanted to share the last two days' worth of images because I have changed things up. Until now I've used the Strathmore Artist Tiles, namely the bristol paper, which are a 6x6 in. square format. I ran out of the tiles for now, and so, instead of going to get some more of that paper, I chose to use the relatively new Strathmore 400 Series Marker Paper.

Strathmore already had marker paper, but that was intended for concept rendering, such as architecture or product design, not for the heavy application many crafters and other illustrators tend to do with markers. I had order a number of pads of different sizes late last year, but I haven't done any marker pieces larger than the tiles until recently. Otherwise, I'd probably be sitting on on the paper for a while, except for a few finished pieces in the 9x12 or 11x14 sizes. (Incidentally, like many artists, I have a lot of sketchbooks and pads waiting to be used. I need to make my way through my supply.) So, I'm playing with the Strathmore 400 marker paper until the end of the month. A good time to see how it actually holds up.

So! On to the images. Because I'm not sure how the marker paper will hold up to my very messy rough drawing style, I opted to draw the rough sketches in a separate sketchbook. I used a 6.25" x 8.5" sketchbook to do the roughs. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account the size after tearing along the perforated edge, so the original is a little narrower and taller than the final marker page. You can see that in the sketch of the Willi from Princess Tutu. I also left behind part of the arm.

The good thing about the narrower sketch is I can adjust the alignment so it's better centered, although I may lose part of the height. I was able to use the missing arm sketch in the final tracing and inking. I've gotten so used to the bristol artist tile surface that the super smooth surface felt a little odd. Not sure how it affected the inking for either piece, but I'll try to adjust. I used warm and cool grey Copic multiliners. The final rosemary was freehanded in marker.

Today's drawing was fanart of the smartphone game Monument Valley, a fun and relaxing puzzle game. The featured characters are Ida and Totem, a creature that helps her in her quest. As you can see in the rough drawing, I made some effort at proper perspective and alignment. It was a mild success there.

The final piece first had it "inked" with an orange and blue color pencil, which I attempted to knock back with the kneaded eraser. I then used the markers to color it in. I felt it needed to be cleaned up a bit with a brown pen for Totem and a cool grey pen for Ida.

Marker Challenge: 186-200

Hit another milestone by making it to 200 daily marker drawings. The drawings for the last couple of weeks are not as grand as I'd like but they are signs of continued progress. I finished with masks for now and moved onto a variety of subjects and a couple studies.

Fanart of a Cheshire Cat from the webcomic Namesake

Fanart of the nebula trash floofs/caterpillars from Voltron Legendary Defender

Pokecember: 25-31

It's the last day of both the year and Pokécember. It's been a pretty good year for Pokémon, from the overall 20th anniversary (did you grab as many mythical pokémon from the giveways as you could?) to Pokémon Go to Sun and Moon. I am glad to use this month's challenge to try out a few things with my Copic markers. And now, to wrap up the year of drawings, here are the last seven days' of Pokécember drawings.

 25. Fave Generation Trainer (24): XY. It was the first game where you could customize your character, which I was so happy to have. I could change the appearance and the clothes, which makes the player character more like me. I also really enjoyed the Pokémon and setting for this game, especially Poke Amie. Glad to have both customization and a slightly modified version of Amie back in Sun and Moon.

 26. Fave Trainer Class: Pokemon Ranger. If I was an actual person in the pokémon world, I'd probably be a Ranger. I opted to go with the XY design because, again, I just really like the design of the rangers in that game. The uniforms look nice and I would wear it.
 

 27. Fave Rival: Blue/Gary Oak. Going classic with this one.

 28. Fave Gym Leader: Lenora from Black/White. The first gym leader of the game, but I liked her a lot.

 

29: Fave E4 Member: Siebold. I really liked the Elite Four members of XY, so it was a tough call which one I wanted to be my fave, but Siebold one out this time. He's a chef and a water user.

  

30: Fave Evil Team: Team Rocket. Again, going with the classics. Even now, 20 years later, everyone knows who Team Rocket is. Opted to go with the game's version and not the more familiar team of Jesse, James, and Meowth from the show because I wanted to homage the classic game grunts.

 

31: 20th Anniversary Moment. I opted to go with celebrating the overall game's anniversary. I had a couple memories I was tempted to use, but I don't know if I could get them across in the available space. But I can say that the reference used was the Pokémon Red cartridge I held onto over the years. I'm pretty sure I started with Blue, but kept the Red cartridge from my second attempt at the game.  So, what's better to celebrate the 20th anniversary than referencing one of the games that started it all?

And that's it for this month and this year. I'm rather pleased with the progress I've made over the last half of the year with my daily marker challenge, as well as my larger goal to draw something everyday (462 days strong!). I hope to keep both streaks going for the next year. I want to do larger and more polished pieces, as well as get back to the basics to strengthen my overall skills. I'll continue to work with markers as well as try to do more digital and watercolor/gauche paintings. And, if I can get my act together, I want to get to do some comics, probably short ones first followed with getting to an ongoing story. It'll take work, but I want to do what I can to add to the world what positive things I can.

Happy new year! May it be a creative and positive one!