A Mess! A Scrambled Mess!

It's been a long time.

Too long.

I've spent too much time being discouraged about drawing, feeling like I've become incapable and focusless. I'd attempt to draw, then immediately stop because I hated what wound-up on the sketchbook paper.

I barely drew, and it's shameful. It's embarrassing.
I felt discouraged by how bad my drawings turned out, and stopped myself from continuing, even though continuing to draw would be the only way to make any improvement. There were several nights over the past few months where I would start drawing, only to end the night in a depressed and anxious mess because I was so disappointed in my self.

But...I guess I'm slowly coming out of that slump.
I picked my pencil up again one day, and started drawing without caring about what I was doing. I started drawing a skeleton and a diagram of the musculature of the human body from reference images, then slowly began picking up speed from there.

As it stands now, I've begun drawing a little more each day.
In this past week, I've managed almost one sketchbook page a day, missing the mark by 2 or 3 pages/days.

What am I doing?
I'm spending too much time thinking. Too much time wondering about what I'm doing instead of just running ahead and letting my pencils and pens hit the paper.

Who cares if I draw something retarded, something terribly-disproportionate, something off-angle or porly-designed? If someone does care, I'll take their criticisms and critiques along with my own self-criticism and learn from it all.

Only a moron would stop themselves with the thought that their work wouldn't be perfect, right?


SO YEAH. ENOUGH RAMBLING.
Let's see some of the slightly-not-trash drawings from my time away from this blog!

I drew a lot of weird things. Have I mentioned I like llamas and alpacas? Alpacas especially.

This is Catherine. Zebra Catherine. I assure you that it made sense at the time of its conception.

And this page is the Red Light District rendered in grayscale.

Rose Hero characters doodled doing things.
And this was the last page from...about mid or late November that was decent.

Just some free doodles from the last week of January, I think. Vyse from Skies of Arcadia, and some Ghost Trick characters, make appearances here. It was about this page that I started feeling more confident again.

I had written up a script for a potential comic using an old character I'd crafted, named Glyde (check the tail-end of this post for the script and other details). As a result of that, I started drawing him in a variety of other scenes, brainstorming uses I could have for him.

Fan art of Moses, from Tales of Legendia. His hands look a little weird, and his legs seem too small and too short, but...ignoring that, he looks pretty nice, I think.

More ideas that came as a result of the creative high born from finishing that script, and from playing too much Solatorobo in the night and morning.

The Volkswagen Weeabeetle, and a four panel fight scene's worth of Tales of Legendia fan art.

There were some instances where I'd draw from reference photos of nude models, but this was the most recent of them, and arguably the best I can offer right now.

I'd also started writing notes to myself as I drew, hoping that somehow, it would spur some positive changes to my drawing.
...I don't really know what to make of this page, really.

At some point, I wanted to try draw some dragons. I'd always had trouble trying to figure out how to draw a typical dragon, being confused with the head shape as well as leg and neck placement, so I started sketching some lizards, then tried my hand at drawing a dragon.

And that's it for stuff from my sketchbook.

The other two images here were used to illustrate parts of a script for a comic that I'd written up earlier in January. Feel free to give it a read if you're very bored and have a lot of time on your hands.




Anyway.
I'm started to get bored with just drawing in my sketchbook.
Not bored in the "this is tedious and draining, it's so pointless," way, but in that the material from my sketchbook doesn't yield any finished, polished work.

And the scanner I have access to right now is absolute garbage when it comes to trying to scan my sketchbook.

One Longest Way

Title pulled from the lyrics to "Distance" by Long Shot Party. (Give the music video a watch. It's entertaining, to say the least.)

Anyway. Not too much to show off this time around, but I've been doing some more playing around with sharpies and some pens that my brother brought home with him from Hawaii. Eight drawings total in today's update.


This was drawn...sometime last week. A week from today, actually. I wanted to draw something to cheer up my girlfriend while she was at work, so I drew the three most important Oresoren from Tales of Legendia. What better way could there have been? The drawing itself has nice, bold lines. I liked using the sharpie for this.

Then, earlier today, I was just doodling in the bottom half of the page, but...got lazy halfway through.

Sarah from my Rose Hero storyline. I played with the sharpie again when I drew her here. I'm pretty satisfied with how she looks in this page, except...something about the way I drew her leg and hips in the drawing of her running just seems off. Like the perspective and alignment of her legs is wrong.

This was just...well, pointless doodling. Toying with the sharpie more.

More sharpie play. I just gave up on this before too much time passed - it was starting to look terrible. The first panel does look very nice, though. I feel like I managed a good sense of action in it.

Aruna from my Rose Hero storyline. I rarely draw largely, and I also rarely draw close-ups of any characters. I gave it a shot here, using the sharpie for a lot of the lines, and...it seems like it turned out okay. Nothing too stellar, especially with the shape of the hair and the proportions of the head/face, but for once, it doesn't look like something that makes me want to die on the inside.

Also, colored Aruna looks waaaay too motherly, for some reason.

Rosa, also from Rose Hero. Playing with her design and drawing large(r) again. Something seems off about her proportions, and her hands also seem kind of wonky.


Richard, also from Rose Hero. Tried the same thing with Aruna, this time with arguably better results. The sharpie is amazing.

The drawing of him standing looks particularly impressive, I think. I stared at him and thought, "Wow, this looks really good."

This was...well, this was just for fun. So many things bother me about Aruna in this drawing - her back looks like it stretches backwards too far, her arm is a bit too long, and her hair looks like a mess.

But that aside, I did have fun drawing this. I play with ideas about Sarah and Aruna in my head.

Anyhow. I seem to be getting back into drawing more regularly. It's starting to feel a lot better, somehow.

Sky's the Limit

Update title pulled from what is presumably the opening for the anime adaption of Persona 4.

Anyway. I have no excuses. I haven't been drawing as much as I should be, so I don't have much to show for the extended period of no updates to this blog. However, I've scanned and collected what I've drawn between now and the last update, save for some trivial sketches and some...dirtier drawings. (Hahaaaaaaaa.)

WELL. UPDATE ROUTINE SET. EXECUTE:
This cross between My Little Pony and Tales of Legendia was drawn as a present for my girlfriend. The linework turned out quite nicely. And, well, even though I missed some details on Chloe's outfit (the girl sitting on the barrel), I think the picture's quite adorable.

Haha, although...I'm not sure if it's quite as entertaining to those who haven't been exposed to either of these franchises.


This sketch of Janus was sitting in pencil form for about a month before I added some ink to it, then I finally finished it up tonight - you can see some lines where I used sharpie for his linework. I think he looks pretty nice, although his arms seem a little long. And he does look...a bit plain.

Now, I'm posting some stuff here out of order, but...one night, when I was getting frustrated with drawing, I just grabbed a sharpie and started drawing things. Among the things I drew were Snake and Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid 4. I also started using my rollerball pen for small details and shading more loosely, here.

Then I snapped.

And I balled up all of my frustration into this...terrible farce of a comic page. I used the sharpie for most of the linework, then just used the rollerball for details. It was about after this that I figured I could use the sharpie a bit more frequently in my work.

This was...I forget when I drew this, but before tonight, only the top portion was filled with material - the primary cast of Atlus' latest release, Catherine, with sheep bodies. Don't ask or think too much.

I filled the bottom portion with me conversing with a gentlemanly alpaca, influenced by a real life event from yesterday at the Clark County Fair where an alpaca and I made noises back and forth to each other. Alpacas hold a special place in my heart.

Rose Hero's female cast, drawn up on July 20th. I doodled this while tinychatting with my friends, and was fairly revitalized by how nicely a lot of the drawings had turned out. In particular, Aruna in the top-left, and Sarah in the bottom-right. This drawing predates the sharpie ones.

This drawing of the faces/heads of Rose Hero's main cast predates the My Little Pony and Tales of Legendia crossover fanart at the beginning of the post. I enjoyed how these turned out. The facial features seem at least...slightly differentiated from one another.


Then this was more recent. Until tonight, this drawing of a new design of Red Adonis was just pencil. So I took my rollerball and sharpie to it, and...well, I got this. Nothing in this really bothers me except for the drawing in the bottom-right, where I think the torso is a little long...

Some few weeks ago, I got an idea for a story that incorporated RPG archetypes and concepts into its universe. This is me taking some of the ideas for characters and drawing them out. This was also the first time I tried using the sharpie instead of my brush pen to get some line variation into my drawings.

That said, the sharpie lines seem kind of jarring here.


This one turned out much better, I think. For Rudy, a tenative main character who would draw on stereotypical Japanese RPG protagonist concepts, spiky hair was a must...and let me say right now that trying to figure out how to draw spiky anime hair from the side (when it points up and juts out to the side) is really difficult for me to try and visualize spatially. But in the end, this turned out nicely.

And in closing, there was this. A long time ago, I would just listen to music and draw whatever images came to my mind as I listened to a song. This was the result of listening to "sister" by Jpop group plane. I enjoyed interspersing sharpie lines and rollerball lines in this one.

I can feel the snow in it.



That said, I feel a bit refreshed in the drawing department after tonight. Let's see what happens.

Sunshine on Summertime

SUNSHIIIINE ON SUUUUUMEEEERRTIIIIIIIIIIMEEEE~

HAHA, I'M FREE FROM COMMUNITY COLLEGE.

Title pulled from DEEN's song of the same title.

Anyway, I've got an odd variety of things to show off in this update. In lieu of school, I've taken it upon myself to begin drawing from photographs again...and then moving on to actually drawing from life. So first up are some studies...


The first of them: Nothing...too spectacular, here. I think I screwed-up on the arms for both of the women I drew here. Keanu Reeve's face is kind of weird, too. They look nice, though.

More women. I think these turned out better than that first page, save for those hideous looking hands.

I think this page is filled with fantastic things. The drawing of Yuki Kajiura on the left turned out swell, as did the woman on the right. The faces up top are all varying in quality.

HEY LOOK, COLOR. I think the only decent things on this page are the woman's face in the top-left, and the woman in the bottom-right.

SO NOW LET'S SWITCH GEARS INTO ANIMU MODE.

I realized I'd never scanned this in before, and it's many weeks old: It's a concept drawing for a character idea I'd been tinkering with for Rose Hero - Blue Adonis, complete with a terrible color scheme. It needs some adjusting.

An extension of the character concept for Blue Adonis. Design ideas for Reed.
Complete with a really awkward, out-of-proportion drawing of his head and neck in the bottom-right.

HEY LOOK, COLOR: I'd drawn-up this page with the intent of doing a flat coloring job for part of it. Here we've got Red Adonis, represented roughly in color.

I have no idea how digital coloring works, and it remains a debilitating weakness.

The top of this page was just a quick observational drawing of the space outside of one of my classes this quarter. The rest of it...well, I don't know what it is. The drawing of Sarah slouched-down pleases my eyes, though.

SO NOW LET'S SWITCH GEARS ONE LAST TIIIIME~

So, last month (or was it early this month?) I was in a Tinychat with some friends I'd made back at Sakuracon. During the course of the Tinychat, everyone decided that we should draw pictures of each other.

So that's what I did. I gave girls tiny bodies and made them look like Mii's, or emphasized their favorite names for me.

I made Harry Potter a MANLY STORY FOR MANLY MEN SUCH AS MYSELF, and also made another friend a MANLY MAN CAPABLE OF MANLY FEATS SUCH AS CONQUERING THE UNKNOWN.

Seriously, man. Eyepatches. Eyepatches just make people look cooler.

And this...this is special. That's also a man, underneath all of that.


AND WITH THAT, I'LL CLOSE THIS UPDATE.
Why the Hell haven't I started a comic yet?

Blue Bird

Update title pulled from the opening to Bakuman's anime adaption.

Just a few drawings, this time around. School's...crunching down on me with the force of a wild animal's jaws. I can't wait to be finished with all my schoolwork. ;_;

Anyhow, everything in this update is Rose Hero related.

Doodles of Aruna and Black Iris: With Black Iris in particular, I wanted to see what her design would look like if I'd tweaked it.

...because I struggle to draw the ways in which a scythe can be used in combat, despite the wealth of videos I could probably find for it.

Drawings of the protagonist, Sero. I wanted to draw him transforming into his superhero alter-ego, which prompted the in-transformation pose on the left.

The one with the off-angle foot on the right side. Otherwise, I quite like it.

More protagonists: A lineup of Sero with Aruna and Sarah. While the outfits are all about right, Sero's face and Aruna's seemingly-disproportionate legs and stature bother me whenever I see this.

But the drawing of Sarah's face in the bottom-right corner pleases me. That's the sort of look I want to be going for when I draw my comic.

More of the main cast: Richard and Rosa. Richard looks kind of strange - his shoulders seem to be sitting a bit too low, and his arms look too thin. Rosa seems fine, though. Rosa's face in the bottom-right, with that smile, is something I surprised myself with.


...Sheesh, I should be catching these mistakes before I set the ink down, shouldn't I?

Role Play Game

Post title taken from lyrics (and title?) of School Food Punishment's song, "RPG."

Well, so I haven't been on a crazy, burning-hot drawing streak...but the drawings I've produced lately have been wonderful in comparison to what I usually generate. My poses feel...looser, lighter - easier to draw.

SO LET'S GOOOOO

Just drawings while I was lounging at my college last Thursday. Started off with a drawing of Belt about to punch someone, then I drew Aruna and Rosa wearing clothes different from their usual designs.

So-so stuff. Belt looks particularly awesome, if not for the odd placement of his arm that's in the foreground.

I was browsing a CERTAIN IMAGEBOARD's anime and manga board the other day, and someone was complaining about some of their work not being accepted someplace. One particular design felt like it'd be fun drawing, so...I took a stab at it.

I'll try to forget I ever drew this.

And this started as a mish-mash of random "NPC"-grade designs I doodled...then I filled the lower-left corner with drawings of Sarah, from Rose Hero's storyline.

I liked how a lot of things turned out here. Except for the guy in the bottom-right. The underside of his chin and his hands, wrist, and arm bothers me.

SPEAKING OF ARMS. I was talking with my girlfriend the other night, and she mentioned a concept for a character, and...well, long story short, it got me drawing a girl with arms being stabbed into her body whilst surrounded by many more. Not sure if this is quite what she had in mind, but I really like how the drawing turned out.

...the problem was, it only took up half the page, so I quickly doodled Aruna in its empty half.

Just drawings of various Rose Hero cast members. All of which look fairly nice. Except for Sero, down in the bottom-left. Ignore the malformed Kyubey.

The drawing of Aruna on the mid-right is something I'm quite proud of, though.



Well. That's it for this update.

...I really should just up and draw comic pages and roll with whatever I wind-up drawing.

"The easiest way to start a comic is to just start drawing it," someone once mentioned to me...