I am a little late to enter this, but am still attempting the challenge as a way to work / think fast when it comes to creating real-life subjects that are not based off of stream of consciousness.
DAY 1: YOURSELF
This is supposed to be a self portrait. Never been that great a portraits. The original picture, however, I've been told doesn't resemble me much either! The last time I drew a self portrait of myself, I drew myself frighteningly scary looking because I was focusing on capturing all the details in my face..... like the bags under my eyes, smile lines etc.
This time I tried to capture the essence of the photo.
What I learned from doing this exercise (and as I do more portraits I attempt) is that the key to what I consider a successful outcome -- when not rendering light/shadows -- is to focus on being as subtle
as possible.
The work space and time wasn't much either. It took about an hour working off of a crappy image on my phone which wasn't even the actual photo! The drawing is where most of my hand drawing reside, in a small fat sketchbook that is the size of a hand. Tiny, tiny, tiny workspace. But for some reason, I work best that way.
I figure the more white space, the more intimidating!
If I did it over again, I take the modern day route. Scan the image and sketch over it with photoshop . OR, what traditional artists tend to do... Scan an image in and draw over it with a handy lightbox.
When I took portraits class way back, we did things by hand with developed photos and the good old grid approach. Always a good technique, too.
Here is a link to the technique, if you never heard of it before and wanted to check it out:
It's quite fun, and you can get a mix of looks by scaling or rearranging the squares around.
DAY 2: FAVORITE ANIMAL
The cheetah. And my first attempt at digital painting with my wacom. I've been in complete fear of sketching digitally but I know that I needed to get past the fear in order to excel as a computer artist. This one was between moments during work, so I could really only dedicate a quick twenty minutes or so. To be honest, most of the work put in was brainstorming the delivery rather than executing a style. I haven't really found my digital painting style yet.
But I aware of what designers/illustrators, both traditional and digital, that I admire and study.
I mentioned others in older posts, but the is also a handful of artists that I have stuck with my since adolesence, too. Some of them include: Gary Larson, Shel Silverstein, and Don Bluth. All artists who style is highly recognizable, simple, and unique.
Back to the Challenge, I spent a good part of the night before researching "how" I wanted to set the shot up and "why" I loved the cheetah so much. I came across an old African tale of how the cheetah got her tears that inspired me into creating a small spinoff....
There are many tales, but this one stuck out the most:
http://www.safariwest.com/cheetahtearstory/
I considered my drawing to be a redux to getting her cubs back after having them stolen from her. In this drawing, she's training them to run so that they can fend for their selves if the the same situation occurs again. A introduction to how the cheetah then gained its speed!
I went a little over the top with my design and took a lot of criticism for it-- and have since fixed it. But as it is the currently, the final piece is still very rough and unfinished.
Some small food for thought, I was taught to go as far as you can as an artist (both performing arts and the latter). Go as far as you can go, because you can always bring it back down a few notches. But if you DON'T stretch it as far as you can, you will not meet a level of quality sufficient enough to deliver a ny type of reaction at all....
I will definitely come back to this piece in the future. I'm not staisfied with it now, but I think it was definitely headed in a direction that I was enjoying.
DAY 3: MY FAVORITE FOOD
This drawing surfacing quickly afterwards in my sketchbook, but took much longer than my last challenge when I brought it in for digital paiting. Purposefully. I didn't want to plow through it.
I focused on working with colors for this one-- since what appeals to most people when it comes to food in actual existence is mostly presentation, colors, and arrangement. I also tried to focus on indicating some form of light and ambience.
I tried not to concentrate so much on the perpective, as I wanted to to be a pop-art, in-your-face sort of drawing. And I left the originalsketch in there too, to keep the drawing gritty and "inked" looking. I probably could have pushed it a lot farther, but I didn't want to convolute the style and was trying to keep it as minimal as possible-- since it was already loud.
My biggest indecision was whether or not to bring out the foam on the beer. But I left it as it was to oversell its freshness. Again, I may have went a bit too far....... but I'd still drink it after the foam finally settled down a bit, would you?! ;-)
Here is a snapshot of the actual challenge incase any one else wanted to give it a try on their own. It's sort of viral if you web-search, but I found out about it through some of my art buddies:
So, Day 4, the next challenge, has been in the works painting itself up in all shapes, ways, and forms in my head. Keep an eye out!
I'm sort of on my own clock with this challenge unfortunanely because I still in the rings fighting strong up against with zbrush and my clay sculpting. I'm grateful the challenge came up though, as it gives me some focused tasks as well as allows me experiment with a range of different styles to help me become a better designer. It also breaks up my time a bit from all things 3D -- which is nice every now and again...
So here it starts for me: The 30 day drawing Challenge. Hoping to get through it in 1 Year or Less.
