Day 101

I sat down tonight and in preparation to find a drawing reference I put "rubber soul" on and it struck me. Why not draw the Beatles? So I started making quick preliminary lines and realized that I really didn't want to draw the most recognizable people in pop culture in any sort of photo realistic way. So I continued with my quick preliminary lines making them darker and darker. I used the shadows of the picture to guide me and scrunched them all together. In the end this is what I made. I went back and touched up a few areas with bolder lines to define some areas and then grabbed a few items from the background and tossed them in arbitrarily. This took about 25 minutes.

Day 100

I have tried to do these pears once before. It was after the Halloween series and I was tapping back into my reservoir of photo references. Along with these pears, I tried two other drawings that day that ended up being crumpled and tossed. Since then I have thought about these pears and my ability to draw them. Every time I went looking for a reference I'd see them and must have developed some minor complex about drawing them again. I knew for sure that I didn't want to attempt it for the second time only to throw it away. But today when I went looking and saw the pears again I decided that they needed to be drawn whether I screwed them up or not. So, here they are: red and delicious!

Day 99

The purpose of capturing every detail was not my intention today. I wanted to practice working with light.

Day 98

I tried two techniques on this one. My usual side of the pencil broad strokes and, for the faces, thin strokes. I used the tip of the pencil and by applying various pressure to make close parallel lines achieved the shape or shadow. It's a shame, really, as some of the strokes are so light that they do not appear in this photo. This is not a technique I use very often as I rarely like what is produced. However, I like this.

Day 97

Another quick one to get in before the day ends.

Day 96

Worked some more on the lion, not exactly done, but I'm happy to leave it where it is. I wasn't sure how the mane would turn out with the technique I chose. I say chose as if I had more than one notion on how to do this. I didn't buy it turned out pretty good. I started out light and moved the darker tones in gradually and it worked! Hope you all enjoy!

Day 94

I didn't have a lot of time to work on this today but was able to work in the clouds and water and various tones throughout. It's coming together nicely and may end up being a nice composition when it's done, we'll see. I darkened up the image in post production to give you patrons an idea of what it'll become. Stay tuned!

Day 92

Drawing #2 in the series "Jo-Jo's drawing request for Joe". This is how it was explained to me: an elephant drinking a DP talking on the telephone while driving with his friends. And the following drawing is what I came up with. I used several references and did a real life photoshop rendering. I like it but its a little messy and hard to decipher what everything is and what's going on. However, due to the fact that it is so messy and what not I noticed, while drawing this, a lot of things I did not intend on drawing or seeing crept in by way of imagination. So have fun looking at it! Is there something you see that you think may have not been intended? By the way, there are three elephants in that minivan.

Day 91

This guy exemplifies my feelings about waiting until 11:35 to draw today. I almost allowed myself to skip on it. But I toughened up, went on google and found this dude. The picture is amazing an my friends I'm amazed at how well this turned out. I clocked myself at 12 minutes. And demanded of myself to do a decent drawing and not something half assed. I feel I met the challenge and for that am proud. Imagine this guy instead of yelling out a war cry is yelling, "F yeah!"

Day 89

Just a quick one today. Somehow the time got away from me. This one goes out to someone who got some new shoes this week. And now the new Homegrown Production can commence. For those of you don't know: matching shoes were the missing prop and a decorated Christmas tree. That should resolve all confusion.
The drawing was done in about 10 minutes and man I wish I had used black paper. Might have turned out a little cooler.

Day 88

I spent another hour on this and am calling it done. I have a tendency to overwork a drawing making it darker and although at times this can turn out good, I really feel that this drawing needed to be light. I've been trying to do that with a lot of my recent drawings. Though I do feel like I could have made this better by spending countless more hours on it perfecting the shade and making it more vibrant; I think it's good practice to say, "enough is enough".

Day 86

This is a complex one. Did I accomplish the task? In my opinion, no. This drawing would have been better if I used charcoal and white charcoal. It's those little droplets of water that made it tough. They all have brilliant white centers. And that I could not accomplish very well with just a pencil. And I think it's not very clear whether the subject is standing behind a wet, foggy window. Maybe a little bit, but I wonder how many people will see that before they read this. I, personally, cannot objectively see this one. I know that there's a window and I think my eyes are seeing it as such. it will be interesting to wait a few weeks and look at it again when I'm further removed.
The original is quite messy and "busy" with too many hard lines. I softened the image in post production and no I will not be uploading the original. I'm not trying to be withholding, I just don't think the technique is all that remarkable.

Day 85

Here's a fun one. I wanted this style to be rough. I used basic shaping and broad to thin lines to form almost everything. No projection lines were used so most likely it's out of proportion. I just drew what I thought would look good.

Day 84

Didn't finish this one either! Man, am I on a role or what? But again this shows a little of my preliminary techniques before I start shading. Hope you half-like it.

Day 83

This one is taking longer than I'd like. But not that's it taking long, I just can't get into it. Again, I spent 30 minutes on it today. I think I'll let this one sit for a while and get back onto it this weekend.
As you can see I've started to lay out some water. I want to dumb down the detail on a lot of this so I'm using broad strokes. I think it will come together nicely in the end. But I'm not being very particular or neat. Right now it looks pretty messy. And in all honesty I'm completely lost on what to do, where to take it. I'm laying myself out on the line here for all you viewers to see just how I get to a finished product.

Day 81

All done. Whatever style I was attempting last night didn't come through. No matter, I like how it turned out.

Day 79

This is just a simple projection. I'll provide a little CAD draft I did to explain what that means:

As time consuming as this may be, at the end I get a true projection. Yes, I measured out each and every plank of wood on this deck just so I could later fill in with black. Sounds counterproductive but the finished product gives a certain amount of textured feel rather than having a flat color. I don't always use a ruler but when I do I draw projections (and really I didn't use a ruler at all it was the edge of a business card). 

So, after all that, which wasn't much. My opinion of this, "Eh." Again I would have preferred my smudgers to my fingers and graphite to a single #2.

Day 78

Another attempt at drawing a blur. I used varying tones and smoothed everything out with my finger except for the tear and some lashes. I think this could have turned out better if I had my smudge sticks and graphite. But with the resources on hand (pun intended) I think it turned out okay. Additionally, I didn't pay much attention to projection so given that it looks a little odd. However, being that it's already an odd photo, I think it masks the imperfection. Smile!

Day 77

Happy election day and if you haven't voted yet, please do! Apparently, the two guys running actually have some sort of power.

I wanted to make some statement about today being election day but I really couldn't formulate my own idea. Anybody else feel similar? I looked online for some ideas and found myself on The New Yorker looking at a cartoon of a voting booth where you could see a coin being flipped from inside. I though, "Great idea! I wonder if I could draw the view from within the booth?" And here is what I came up with.

Day 76

After such an undertaking over the weekend I decided to give myself a break and do something simpler. I also wanted to practice a blur technique. To do this I roughly sketched the background and drew the foreground more detailed and bolder. Let me know what you think.

The picture is quite funny. An old and young person being carted around by two middle aged adults. Also, and maybe I should have opted or a more detailed drawing to convey this, but the three adults are very interested by something to their right while the child is captivated by something to the left.

Day 75

A suggestion from my wife. She sent this to me in a text and I knew she picked a good one. Naturally she has an impeccable eye for beauty.

As you have seen from yesterday I finished the shading and toning. Some areas were much trickier than others such as the fold around her neck and the garments flow down her right side. I think I did an okay job on that. The ballooned effect on the left and swirled drape down her leg are very pleasing to me. I had to improvise the right foot as the reference photo provided no such foot to look at. Again, I think I did an alright rendition of that. As such with her right hand. What I like most is the suggestion of her body. The photo provided for some indication as the garment is see through but much of it I drew on my own. A lot of the freehand was on account that my angles for everything in this drawing are slightly to very off. With that said, I again, think I tied it up nicely. If a discerning eye was to look at this drawing the owner of that eye might be able to call me out on distortion and skew and if such a person is you please leave a comment. But all in all the shape and linear alignment make some sense.

Now the canvas style paper. Never again, unless I desire such a texture, will I use graphite on canvas. Never.

Day 73

I annoyed myself with how small I drew this. First off it's a whole different difficulty level but my eyes get all crossed and my neck starts stiffing. I started the drawing with the outlines of the woman and horse and didn't worry about the water at all. Once I was done with that I worked my way down starting with the hair and finished by shading the horse's backside. The horse was a little tricky as most of it was hidden in shadow in the semi-low resolution photo. I worked a lot of it out by memory of the previous horse I drew. One of my least favorite things to draw is water because I never know to get into it. I started by placing the shadows and worked out the rest somehow.

Day 72

I started this sketch out with a light sketch of the tripod. I wanted that as my base. I then formed the panda around and when I saw fit to add the boy in the chair I realized I needed to do some prep work. I needed projection lines and vanishing points. I've always been proud of myself for attending that day of art class back in grade school. So I did them in the best I knew how and the best I could remember only to find I had completely disregarded the already somewhat drawn panda w/ tripod. (Get yours today). To put in one way: I made them float . Physically speaking there was no possible way that tripod was going to stand upright on this plane I created. Instead of switching gear and drawing a falling panda I decided I had to do something about the legs of the tripod and chair. I think it worked out. But, the playing field of this drawing is still skewed.

I ran into all sorts of trouble when I drew the building too close. So naturally when I deviate far enough away from the reference I stop looking at it and start improvising. I am quite pleased with how the bricks of the "too close for spacial logistics building" turned out. I used a messier technique on the background buildings as I really needed to wrap this one up. I prefer the more detailed.

After a few variable swipes to blend and shade. I said, "Ok, that's it, I'm done." 

If you compare this drawing to it's sister drawing of a bear sitting at a table you might agree, things have definitely changed. That drawing was drawn with a draftsman pencil lead in a lead holder. This drawing by #2 pencil alone. That explains a lot of the technical difference but I do feel as though its coming easier and quicker as well. And since I brought up mediums and no one had interrupted me yet I'll say further, I really want to draw more with the set graphite pencils. Maybe this weekend I'll draw a bear doing some funny shit with those pencils. That way I can compare the difference of all three.

So I hope this drawing makes you smile a little, laugh, and just overall feel good.