Morning of Yore

I wanted to get this out of the way for today, so I did a 5-minute sketch! Here it is. I chose a really simple side profile because those seem like the quickest to do.

Water is a craft

Today, I almost forgot my personal commitment to post here each day. I didn't do much of any drawing today, but I did work a little bit on some weird watercraft idea. I'm not entirely sure myself the point of this. The idea was the craft had a clear view through the front shield, into the water below the craft, despite the craft resting generally on top of the water.

Banner continued

To follow up last nights post, I'm more-or-less finishing the Banner Saga fan art piece I started in Feb. and restarted last night. I decided to keep it rather fast, loose, and smudgy. I don't really enjoy reworking old stuff, because they usually need to be completely reworked from scratch instead of patched. Reworking old projects also warps me back in time mentally, where I get stuck following old bad habits. Well here it is, patched. :D

When I started tonight, I had to do a quick sketch of how they were standing and sized. The original was more cramped. I'm still not entirely happy with the positioning and composition.

Since this is Banner Saga fan art related post, I'll also re-upload my other Banner Saga fan art piece. Stormy Seas. It's not entirely clear, but that little guy is protecting the "world" servers, which I now realize should be next to (the super tiny) Yggdrasill, world tree. It was a fun idea. 

Edit: Ha. I found the original-original. Here it is. (each character shared some feature of one of the main three Stoic Studio devs). 

Banner

Since I'm holding myself to posting something each day here, today I sort of ran into a bit of mud. I was up all night last night, and so today I've really been out of it. I haven't gotten much down this evening. When I sat down at my computer it was already 10 pm, and I was mindlessly sleepy. So to reach my pseudo-quota I looked back for something I could/wanted-to rework. I chose this fanart I started back in February for the game the Banner Saga: Factions. The devs are really cool and nice people. I originally drew this with the plan to somehow incorporate some features of each of the three devs into the characters, be it giant side burns, goatee + glasses as armor, and a beard. It was silly, but the characters were very flat, boring, and incomplete. So I have the perfect reason to rework this. I haven't played and Factions in a very long time, so this project idea has probably been largely warped. This is still a WIP.

Fornesby

Haha! I haven't gone to sleep yet, but it's tomorrow so this still counts! ... I drank way too much coffee today. However, when my brain is sleepy-numb, I tend to be more willing to work longer on projects. This was a strange escher-girl drawing I just kept on adding to. Simple single tone shading on flat colors can be very handy and is a quick way to do lighting. The lighting in this isn't top-notch, but I feel, for now at least, it's passable. The extreme escher-girl shape is still in the drawing, just masked by the clothes. See it? Haha. Yeah.. After a few minutes, I just couldn't handle that distorted of a drawing.  Some days it's fun to draw with that extreme, but tonight I wasn't feeling it. I'll wake up tomorrow morning and see the other giant distortions I left in, but for now it's fine. I'll throw up the flats minus the sloppy shading. None of it is highly refined, but flat color and basic lines can look nice and clean. ...Okay. Off to bed I go!!

Towards something

A consecutive day post? Perhaps I can string these along through the entire month. That would itself be an accomplishment for me. :D Going to throw down another little sketch-scribble. I've been sketching a lot today, but mostly just making notes. I was getting sleepy tonight and scribbled this little character. I haven't been feeling too adventurous lately to work on larger projects.  

Haywood

Woohoo, a new month! It's kind of nice to restart with each new month, giving yourself new goals and deadlines. It's refreshing. I was watching my friend stream Hearthstone last night, and since the majority of my screen was taken up by the stream, I couldn't really draw anything on the computer. I decided to pull out a dusty sketch book and throw down some pencil sketches. I seem to go back and forth frequently, learning and forgetting. The key I've found to drawing with pencil is working with a soft touch. A single pencil can simulate a varying number of values and marks.

It's a nice change. When I work softly, I noticed that I hold the pencil roughly 2 to 3 inches above the lead. However, when I draw digitally, I usually hold the stylus about half an inch for the point. This shorter grasp greatly constricts the variance of my strokes and shapes. It also cramps my hand more easily.

I've additionally had the bad habit of heavily using one digital brush in only one manner, making my work bland and lacking nuance. For whatever reason, I get a brain-lock and make the thought of changing brushes very difficult, despite my vast assortment for selection.

Some days, I just don't like using low opacity on a blank space. I feel like the lines need to be solid, so I opt to use dark black lines when I really need to be using soft, varying lines. This can make my drawings very rigid.

Here's a little digital sketch I did right before bed. I took what I was relearning from the paper sketching and applying it to the digital space. It's a quick few minute sketch. It might be hard to understand, but there are a lot of minute visual notes in the sketch for me, because I will probably use this to make a finished piece.