24 Hour Sketch

This one surprised me at how quickly I was able to draw it. It took approximately 10 minutes to do this. Although its not nearly complete: the tones are minimal and the edges are pretty rough. But it looks pretty good.

It's been a while and I'm not quite sure what number day it is but I've taken a posting break for over 6 weeks. It's time to get back into it and I was given this photo just recently and I thought it was really cool. So, I drew it. After doing the pencil work I brought it some colors and smudged out areas bringing the focal point towards the two siblings. I'm more than pleased to deaden the silence with this drawing.

Practiced some lighting today. I used only one pencil for the entire drawing and  am surprised I was able to get it as dark as I did without scratching through the paper. Once I had the graphite down where I wanted it I smoothed it out and developed the soft gradients to wash out any hard lines where the light was more brilliant. Overall I think this turned out rather nice.

While cooking a pizza tonight I sat down with a soda and drew the day's sketch. I used the tablet and stylus again for this as it was nearby and well, getting up to grab a pencil and paper was at the time a very taxing thought. Additionally I really like to practice digital art. Enjoy!

Continuation from yesterday. I didn't really complete it the way I wanted but I'm happy with it. I just didn't have the precision tools to produce those hard lines that I initially wanted. 

If it wasn't for that right eye being offset just ever so slightly this would actually look like the real Kurt!

This was a simpler wave to draw and did not challenge me as much as yesterday's. I was able to merge the tones well enough to form the drawing. I was hoping to gain more detail but when I brought in the darker tones I abandoned that endeavor. In the end I just wanted it to look uniform and I think I accomplished that.

This wave was pretty tricky and I saw my artistic skills get sucked under. I'll rephrase that without trying to be witty: the limitations of my artistic ability were made clear to me. I think I may have tackled something that I wasn't ready for. And for that it's a great day here at the 24 Hour Sketch! I love when I can't even figure out how to simplify the drawing through some technique. For lack of education I don't know exactly what the techniques are called that I use but I might have tried them all. I even rolled up my very own tortillon thinking that might solve some of the issues I was having. I tried stippling at one point! (No pun intended) and with that bear with me! I'm gonna be witty again. As with all waves, proceeding one and preceded by another, there will be more to come. Waves that is. Seriously, I picked two pictures out the other day. I literally have another one right up my sleeve that I'm pretty sure I can't draw. Hold the laughter …

Now this is a first, not the subject matter, but the double post! I was liking this when I started but didn't quite plan it out correctly. The perspective seems to be a bit off. 

What an accomplishment this blog would be if I had actually drawn for 270 consecutive days! I just want to take this moment for myself and feel proud in that thought. WOW! What an accomplishment!… it would have been. Let the consoling begin!Anyway, this, I believe, is the first post to make it to the 24 hour sketch, and if not the first then one of the very few, to show just how small most of these drawings are. The lower right corner is stapled. So scale it in your mind accordingly.
Now would as good a time as any to express my dislike of this drawing. I do not like it. There, that's all. 

Here's another negative drawing. Nothing truly spectacular. I wanted it to be grander than what it is but just got impatient and rushed the sketch.

Once again it's been too long since I posted a drawing. This one was going to be part of my fabric study series back in January. So, it's been sitting in my phone since then and I decided to draw it today, actually I started it yesterday. If I could go back and work out one thing in this drawing it would be the hand.

Update: apparently I did draw this, check out Day 160. It's kind of cool comparing the two. The first was more focused on the dress.

I saw this picture and just had to draw it. That's all, oh and blogger mobile finally added bold italics! yay

Unfinished piece that I'm neither happy with nor unhappy with. Above all the unfinished aspects of this drawing it's the tones and blending that had I spent more time on would have produced something I'd like. So here it is.

I'm thinking if this were drawn at a bigger scale I could have pulled in more detail. When I say detail I mean the gradient of tones as dice don't really have much detail in the first place. The die in the background is meant to be slightly blurred and again if it were bigger that endeavor may have been better accomplished.

So this one is pretty obvious where I got my reference from (even though the two look nothing like the actors). But then again who the eff knows exactly what Romeo and Juliet looked like in the first place? To save face, I wasn't trying to make this photorealistic. I like the soft strokes and hard lines that I was able to extract and the stippling of "detail" turned out not so bad. The real focus I wanted to make clear are the hands.

I've been wanting to get this one drawn for a while. I dig the expression and attitude the subject is displaying and I believe I captured it well. This drawing is small, about 2.5" in height and done with a single pencil. I would have liked to add more dark tones in there but to save warping the paper I had to settle for a lighter grey. Either way, I'm pleased with it.

Grabbed the pencils and vowed to myself that I would draw something that had variance of values. This is what I got:

I've been asked to draw an image to be later gifted and I've yet to actually sit down and work it out. However, I thought I'd get my bearings for the image and doodles out this today.

Broke out the pencils for this. I was surprised at how fast I scribbled this out, about 30 minutes. There were some values that I left out that would have provided for a lot more detail but that would have also provided for a longer draw time. One mistake that I've made while doing this 24 hour sketch is drawing all day. I did a lot of that during December and it kind of burned me out.

I don't make a lot of statements. But I felt maybe I should draw about the walk on Congress for citizenship. This country was built on immigration. Let em have it. They can figure out how it's not so great once they're stuck here.

This was an over achievement, but that's not a bad thing. Again, this is a negative drawn image. The smoke is a bit much. It needs to be more subtle / simple. I like the facial features. They aren't perfect but it works. I am definitely excited about drawing this way. And I thought drawing white on black was hard. After drawing this, which took about half an hour, my brain hurts. I love it!

Another negative image. I'm diggin' how this turned out. It started out a regular google image search day and when I saw this is reminded me of the drawing I did before of the woman jumping with the chalk. I wouldn't be surprised if this is from the same photo shoot. I decided that the image had too much black in it and instead of doing a white charcoal on black paper I instead drew the white in the photo with pencil. After I was done with that I ran it through a negative filter and ran up the contrast.

I took a break from the digital world today, artistically that is, but I didn't get a chance to finish. These are my keys, copy them as you please.

My niece kept saying, "you aren't finished yet? It looks great already!" I think she just wanted to draw with the stylus.

Another stylus drawing using Adobe's IOS Ideas app. It's a still life of my cigarette pack. I chose to not put any typography as I'm not that good with the program yet, but I'm getting better. One thing I love about digital art is the undo and layer features.

Today is a still life of some glasses that sometimes have votive candles in them. No candles today. I drew this in Adobe Ideas again. I'm posting two drawings: the color one is the original and the b/w one I thought just turned out really cool and lucky for you I feel like sharing.

On another note: I have got to get back into the swing of it! I've been missing way too many days!

Damn! It's been too long since I picked up a pencil. I gave myself 20 minutes to draw this. I'm not sure why. I guess because it's late and I want to sleep.

Instead of drawing a landscape I zoomed in, found a blade of grass with some dew on it. I still don't think I've perfected the art of the blur but I'm getting better. The blade is less detailed than I originally planned for and the water droplets are more 2 dimensional. For a sketch it's good. I won't be posting this drawing anywhere else though. We'll see; I always end up liking my drawings more after I forget about drawing them.

I don't know what the hell I was trying to do today, but I like the texture of the hill.

Although I started this with the same intention as last night I spent some extra time on it to define certain areas and shade. I really like the different strokes I used to develop the different pieces of this scenery. And god, I wish this could have been one I actually drew outside beholding the grand ocean view from Smather's Beach.

The objective tonight was rapid visualization. I didn't plan anything out, drew what I saw and conceptualized the landscape through my pencil jabs and erratic movements. For my style of drawing this works well. I have a hard time even wanting to plan ahead. It's great to be able to itemize. As such with this landscape: tree, water, mountains, bush, clouds, etc. It's not that I completely made the landscape my own but I had the freedom to put the pieces where I wanted them without worrying about whether it made spatial sense. One of there days I'll get outside and draw. I'm looking forward to it, but again, at the last minute, I used a photo.

So I discovered that when one decided to do landscapes, or cityscapes in this case, it's best to get the drawing in before sunset. Otherwise the scenery is harder to see. So I'll have to make sure I get these done early from here on out. This is from a photo again; I didn't have the luxury of going out on the town and drawing the city from across the lake. Also, first person who can figure out what's ironic about this picture gets a free viewing of tomorrow's sketch! I know, I'm too generous!

Landscapes/scenery will be this month's study. I really want to explore the organic and unforced aspects of form and shape. I also think that I won't fall short of ideas. This concentration of scenery came as an inspiration to me from another artist's words. It was on the topic of still life and how he would sit outside and draw what he saw. I've always thought it was pretty cool whenever I've seen an artist with their easel outside painting or drawing or what not. So I plan on doing a little more of that. This month will hopefully be less rendition of photography and more drawing of the real world, the landscape that is. Today's drawing, however, is from a photograph. I pulled in as much of the dark areas as possible and faded into the light to create a true contrast of the two.

Here's the last of the fabric series. I had a difficult time creating a perspective on the train. My intention was to focus the drawing on that and up to the waist. That didn't work out so well. All in all I argue that she's a short bride. Nothing more, nothing less. Her legs are the perfect length for her; you shouldn't judge her for it.

I spent some time on this one and planned it out. It is small at about 3.5 inches so there wasn't a lot of room for error. Although, smaller drawings have a certain forgiving quality about them. Basically I took a cue from yesterday and got this done early, planned it out, and took my time. I like it. I didn't have fun with it but I like it.

Drawing fabric takes time and a lot of layers. I kind of think I should have left this drawing without the darker strokes. It looked better and I really thought it was turning out okay. I ended up elongating the width and all of a sudden the top didn't make sense anymore. That's another thing: drawing fabric takes time, a lot of layers and good planning. The planning part is hard for me with any drawing. I'll get better or keep putting out stuff that I learn to like. Also, drawing at the end of the day tends to produce less than favorable results. Anyway, here's for today!

This miniature was a request/suggestion from my wife.

Two pencils, 6B and 3H. I started with the bust and moved down the left side to where the hand is lifting the dress. I then followed the sweep of the dress back up almost to the where the other arm should be. I then swooped across the waist and moved over to the right shoulder to bring the other arm down to meet the sweep of the dress. After that I filled in the rest. I thought to maybe post it with just the light lines but then decided I needed some bold ones. I sparingly contoured certain darker areas and called it good.

This one was difficult to capture. I got part of it right but most of the edge doesn't look right. It should appear to come at you then fall. This it doesn't do. I will plead with you that I did this fast and without preparation. Not that that makes it better. The form is good though.

A nicely folded stack of clothes that I managed to mangle and get all wrinkled! Ah, art is an imitation of life.

Well here's today's drawing! I know I'm excited. Honestly, I need to draw more heaps of fabric. This drawing of clothing is boring the F out of me!
I didn't copy the photo, as I find myself doing when it comes to clothing. I drew the basics and then made it my own. I do like how it turned out, and if it weren't for the colors I might have skipped today too!

My cap! I haven't done a still life since grade school. I drew this with one eye and mostly one pencil. I smudged it as I did with yesterday's drawing but this one proved to be a lot easier. I think the complexity of the drawings speak for them self. I used a darker B series pencil to darken in the shadows and in less than 20 minutes called it good. There is one thing that I didn't do: texturize. That would have made for a much longer drawing time. I'm not opposed to doing that. I just didn't want to tonight.

It's coming together. Not sure how or when. Maybe last night's drawing was a break through. I had fun with this one again. And I didn't play around with the original. This drawing looks pretty damn close. I ran through four layers and the last one was the trickiest. I started out with a 2B and got the dark spots with light shading around the fades. Then I used the HB to smooth out the transition (fades) between light and dark. Then I moved to the 6B for the really dark crevices. Once that was complete I took a picture in case I happened to ruin it. The fourth layer was the smudge stick. Usually I love smudging but for some reason it wasn't working out so well for me. I really had to move with the contours more so then ever. You can see down near the bottom where it got a little messy (the really dark blob). But in the end I compared the pre-smudged drawing to the smudged and liked what happened.

I tried this twice. I was provided with a photo of a sheet draped over somebody. The photo is complex with many folds and layers of fabric. So, initially I tried to create the drawing exactly like the photo. Somewhere in the first five minutes I got lost in the folds and couldn't make sense of it anymore. I scrapped that and tried again. For my second attempt I decided I wasn't going to worry about accuracy. The sheet is white but I used my B series pencils because I wanted to make bold lines. I contoured the sheet and then formed the folds. Although most if it turned out good, some of folds inverted due to the heaviness of the pencils I chose. I'm okay with that. After doing this drawing my interest in fabric has increased. I had fun with this one.

I drew yesterday, a little here and there, but again had nothing to upload by the end of the day. Today, I tried Marilyn Monroe in her famous picture standing above a grate with her dress blowing up. A great picture, especially for this months study. I humbly acknowledge that I don't know what the F I'm doing. I did attempt to draw her face and promptly erased it. Her body is way out of proportion and the dress ( fabric) is horrible.

Something completely new. I used the program adobe ideas and a stylus. I only used black coloring and varied opacity. Turned out pretty cool.

Here's the one I was talking about on Friday. My wife says, " She looks like a cute little fairy!" And I say, "True that babes, true that."

I gotta say I like drawing small. The finished product has a much faster turn around. I also don't have to be that precise. There should be museums for miniature works. Maybe there already is. Maybe.