Saturday, October 19, 2019

Drawing Improvement - Creative Living

As I mentioned earlier this year, I was intending to work on improving my art this year, a day at a time. The best way to improve is through practice, right?

As a reminder, here's what my first drawing of the year looked like.





I laugh at it now. There's so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to start.

But in order to start improving, I had to start somewhere, right? As far as starting points go, that's not horrible.

...I guess.

By the end of January, here's where I was.




Better. Not great. But definitely an improvement.

So I kept at it.

Here's what I've done so far.

January Character Busts


Not great. The shading sucks, the eyes are too big and I really couldn't get hair down at all... not to mention problems with likeness. None of these really looked like the people I was trying to draw.

But I kept at it.

February Character Busts


Sooo much better. There's more likeness and since I'm focusing on lines instead of shading, I'm also to get shapes down so much better. 

These two are my absolute favorites from February because they look the most like the people I was trying to draw.


During February, I also did some eye studies. I'm very pleased with how these came out. I learned very quickly that the best way to determine eye shape and give life to the drawing was to shade them. So even though I did very little shading for the rest of my art, I always took time to shade the eyes. It made a huge difference.




March Character Busts




This one I tried to do several things. One, I tried to draw a character without a reference - the third character on here was made completely reference free. The whole point was that I was attempting to be able to draw characters that I created in my head. 

The second thing I did was work on drawing my own Zyearth characters in an attempt to find a good middle ground between realistic and cartoony. My first attempt at Matt sucked - he was far too human. But the second attempt and my drawing of Izzy worked very well. 


During March, I also did a mouth study. 

Mouths are... surprising difficult to draw. Especially with teeth. This was the first time I need to look up some deliberate exercises to practice. They definitely got better as time went on and I have much more confidence with them. 

Then... school got in the way and my progression slowed. But I still kept at it! 

April and May character Busts
These two months were so important. For one, I started attempting proper shading. That was so key in making my drawings pop. For two, I also started attempting the Loomis Method, which helped with proportions.






It also felt like going backwards. 

Eventually I found a middle ground where I use both the Loomis Method and my own methods of measuring to find a happy middle. 

I also practiced with ears. They were easier than I thought. I only did a few though, before life got in the way of drawing. 




















But... I had improved. Dramatically. 



Both of these progression pictures are of the same people, but you can see how different the skills are. Makes me proud. <3

Then... I stopped completely. I just didn't have the time or energy to continue the daily drawings. I was so worried my skills would rot away like they had before.

Then a YouTuber I watch held a contest to make him spoopy for Halloween. I dragged out my drawing utensils again. 

WHOA LOOK AT THAT I CAN STILL DRAW.




Then I attempted something for Inktober. 



HOLY CRAP MATT IS BACK. I'm currently digitizing this one to use for the cover for Matt's short story when I'm finished with it. 

So, despite the setbacks, I'm still growing. I'm very proud of where I've come. 

And that's the take away here. If you find yourself dragging yourself down and telling yourself you aren't a good artist or writer or costume maker or whatever creative thing you're working on, look at where you've come. I went from this: 




To this: 




And you can too! People will frequently ask artists "How did you do that!?" 

And the answer always is "Practice." 

So practice. Draw. Make crap. Because making crap is the only way to get to the good stuff. You can do it. <3 Don't give up!