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.

Zero

Title pulled from Bump of Chicken's "Zero," the theme for Final Fantasy Type-Zero.
(EDIT: Aaaawrgh. The video got taken down.)

It's been a loooong, looooong time, hasn't it?
Well, no need to talk about why I haven't been drawing.

That said, I'm filling up my sketchbook faster than I have before, though. On one hand - more drawings! On the other hand - more drawings I could be scanning in!

But I'm only scanning in a few of them.

So I was drawing with some friends over webcam, via Skype. The "theme for the day" happened to be "generic RPG characters." With that in mind, I started drawing a swordsman and a mage, but didn't get around to showing them what I'd drawn.

Well. Maybe this fixes that.

After I drew those two, I just went off and started drawing more in theme with the "generic RPG character" concept. This produced the dragon you see here. The only thing that bothers me about this guy is...his wing on the left side. I think it looks kind of scrunched.

Playing with proportions and disregarding them. I toyed with the idea for a villain and came up with this evil old man.

With this guy, Troy, I had an urge to make someone really tall. Someone lanky, tall and thin like a spear or lance. Too bad his outfit's sort of mismatched...

I took a break from drawing up characters and started drawing from photos off of flickr. It's fun to see what comes up if you search "bar" and "drinks." The parrot, sadly, was not a result of this search.

I learned that it's a pain to draw ice floating in liquid of various colors.

Then I drew up an apple from Google Images. A braeburn apple, I think. It was the first time in years that I'd drawn anything without relying on an outline. That's done all in colored pencil. I'd had a bad night after drawing the hamster, and that manifested in the monster you see there.

Then I returned to drawing more characters shortly after that. With the concept of an "elegant but powerful" prince, I created Lucas. I try to think that he doesn't resemble Cloud Strife in terms of hairstyle.

Now, with Lydia here, I'd first drawn her as the super-deformed, jellybean-shaped tiny witch you see in the bottom-left. But I "expanded" her into a more proportionate design, as seen on the right side. I blame Halloween coming up influencing me.

And then, I wanted to redesign the "RPG Hero" I concepted earlier. The swordsman I'd drawn up days ago I refined into Rudy. He looks...a little less generic. I think I should have put armor on both of his arms instead of just his left.

What bothers me is that, as I was uploading images to the blog, I noticed that the back of Rudy's head and the back of Lucas' head are similar.

And then, after redesigning the swordsman, I redesigned the Mage and produced Salena.

Salena is awesome.

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?

Rumba Rumba Rumba Rumba Rumba

Post title pulled from the lyrics to Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei's second season's (?) opening song.

I had a busy, delightful, and all-around interesting weekend, but now I'm back with pencil and pen in hand, screwing eeeeeverything up in a new sketchbook!

So, down to business. Four drawings in this update -

I opened up flickr and began searching photos to draw from, with the intent of coming up with studies of people in street clothes. Obviously, I got distracted, and eventually drew a horribly-disproportionate police officer (?) in the center of the page.

But I like the man in the bottom-left. He turned out well.

So last night, I had this dream about an anthromorphic black cat killing a fat, anthromorphic cat king out of revenge, and learning strange things about his mother. After 10 minutes in the shower, I began producing ideas for a comic I could try drawing.

I'm no furry artist, and my knowledge of feline anatomy is poor, so I drew up this boy, tenatively named Belt, with a long belt hanging off the back of his pants in mimicry of a tail. I quite like him.

And then I drew...well, I guess...this guy is something of a prince? "Scarf," "Scarves," "Klaus"...I couldn't think of a good name for him. No idea what to make of this design so far.

And then, I wanted to draw this anthromorphic cat king. Not very much like the fat cat man I'd witnessed in last night's dream. I had this idea for a dramatic shot that I wanted to draw, so I rushed with practicing a mock-up of the king's design while doing some lazy doodles of cats using photos from the web...and then drew the red image at the top of the page.

Well, that about wraps up this update.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLLLLLDDDDD

Gravity

Post title pulled from the title of Star Driver's first opening.

It's been a long time since I last updated. Over the past few weeks, (or is it, "past month?") I'd been hit with this draining, stressful sensation...a depression, I guess. During that time, I couldn't really bring myself to draw.

As a result, I didn't update. Obviously.

But as the weather's become clearer, so has my mood and mind. That's why I've got an update for you today.

This drawing of Rose Hero's cast was produced back before Spring Break hit...I drew it with the intention of practicing using different tones on each character's outfit, to see what worked best. That just didn't happen. Especially with how monstrously-disproportionate Rosa's body is.


This was drawn up...sometime last week, I think. Mostly just to show off Black Iris. I try to ignore Richard down in the bottom right.

But then each time I tried to draw, nothing but garbage came out. This is that garbage. Nothing too great here... Or at least, nothing like I wanted, anyway.

So, I figured I'd just do life drawings. As per the usual, I drew my left hand. These didn't turn out so badly, I think. Especially since I didn't let myself eat lunch that day until I'd filled the page with hands.

No lunch-deprivation technique in use here. Just drawings of my hand, plus some stuff out of the Nordstroms catalogue in my bookbag.

And just today I drew up, inked, scanned, and (sort of) touched-up this page. This page is proof of my good mood returning. The fact that I drew it, I mean.

...I can't render water at all. I need to overcome this.

Dazzling

Post title sharing its name with the translation of a track from Star Driver's OST.

ANYWAY! I had a large chunk of time to myself to draw today...largely as a result of having nothing to do at school until 3:30 PM, and getting to the campus at about 8:30 AM. I sat and drew for maybe all but 30 minutes.

(Not like I have much to show for it, the way I draw, right? Right?)

This wasn't from today's drawing session. This was from a few days ago. Top is a drawing made from a lounge elsewhere on campus, made while waiting for my English 102 class. All but one of the faces in the bottom segment are drawn from a hairstyle magazine.

Faces from hairstyle magazines, a Nordstroms catalogue, and an Amtrak brochure. The old man in the top-right turned out best, I think.

Overall, I've been enjoying drawing out of that hairstyle magazine...although, I really should start drawing from life and not photos. >_>;

Anyway, the rest of the drawings are of characters from my Rose Hero story/plot. People checking in regularly with the blog should be familiar with these recurring faces...

Sketches of Sero/Red Adonis. I'm not too keen on how anything besides the bottom-left drawing turned out. Everything else looks...awkward. I'd have filled in the black or toned areas, but the pens I use for that have...dried-up. ._.

Various characters. Aruna and Sero on a dock, at the top. Aruna, on the left, seems...oddly-proportioned, and it bothers me. Maybe it's just the angle and perspective. Down below on the left was an attempt at redesigning Rosa with a new hairstyle, which I am very, very pleased with.

Sketches of Richard...nothing too special here. His sleeve in the top-left drawing seems like it's too...smooth? Lacking detail, I guess.

And then this is me playing with Rosa's new design. I'd enjoy the swinging drawing much more if her eyes hadn't turned out so strange-looking.

Overall, I'm feeling like I'm getting back into the swing of things.

I'm remembering the feeling that I need the most if I want to draw my best.

(24 images still left in order to meet last year's quota, though!)