2 Minute Landscapes

I decided to challenge myself personally by doing a sequence of landscapes limited to 2 minutes each. This challenge was mainly to practice gesture drawing, for I never have done a gesture sequence of landscapes. These are all straight out of the noggin...or straight out of the pen. As you can see, some are better than others, and I think the better ones are those that have a stronger balance between black and white. Also, I adjusted pen settings about half way through, which made a huge difference. Tell me what you think.

The two minutes did not include cropping.

Challenge Day 3~ Favorite Food

Doing the challenge each day is literally impossible for me with school and a baby.

One of my favorite foods are haystacks. If you don't know what a haystack is, it's like this: taco salad x amazing= haystack. This was a fun one to build, as I piled each thing on in a separate layer. Fritos, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, taco sauce, and ranch.

Animation Trial

Yesterday I did some tinkering around with iMovie and decided to see if I could make a short animation. I have never animated before, so this was a new venture. I just went with a simple face and adjusted it little by little until it was smiling. After I put it all together in iMovie, I did one take on the sound to match the expression. I think the results are pretty hilarious. My wife thinks I am a nerd. Check it out.

Challenge Day 2~Favorite Animal–Narwhal

I don't know that I have a favorite animal, because I really like all animals. Well, mainly mammals. The first one that came to my mind as one of my favorites, is a narwhal. So here is my drawing of a narwhal. Did you know that is a tusk, attached to the left side of it's mouth?

Challenge Day 1~ Self-portrait

I stumbled upon a 30 day drawing challenge that I am going to take on. I really want to develop as an artist, but I am probably the least disciplined person in the world. Especially when it comes to drawing while I am a full time student.

The first challenge is to do a self-portrait. This ended up taking way more time that I thought it would, so I will share with you my process. I'm not to thrilled about the final product as I got a bit frustrated and settled for what came of it all. Here's my process:

Step 1: Establish perspective, axis, and mild contour. Notice the lines across the face which establish eye, nose, ear, and mouth positions.

Step 2: Further develop contour and overall shapes.

Step 3: Establish major features.

Step 4: Details!

Step 5: Drop opacity on all layers and do more solid line work.

Step 6: Finish basic line work.

This is where I ended up settling due to frustration, and I turned all layers back on.

I've discovered that maybe inking is just not for me. I really like the results of Step 4, but then it went sort of downhill. Oh well.

We'll see what happens tomorrow! 

Warm Ups

Since I rarely do full projects, I am going to start posting some of my warm up sketches. 'Warm ups' would be the equivalent of stretching before exercise. They get the artistic blood pumping. Or you could just call them doodles. Here is one from today.

Iowa Farm

Here is one I drew for my mom on her birthday. All pencil.