for love of drawing

I've always wanted to try to draw creatures. One of the books I bought is called Manga Matrix: Create unique characters using the Japanese matrix system. The book is quite fantastic, and delves into taking influences from the creatures of our world to create new types of creatures.


It's really quite interesting! It has tons of colored pictures as well, so it's almost impossible to fall into a rut. Two days ago I received my second monster book, called Hell Beasts: How to Draw Grotesque Fantasy Creatures The author/illustrator takes you from his pencil sketches to the final pieces for his created characters. Pretty cool, though I do like Manga Matrix a little more.

I think the biggest difference between the two is that Matrix covers more ideas about "what" to draw and how to train yourself to see the connections between creatures, while Hell Beasts is a pretty straight forward How To book.

I'll be getting another book today, 100 Ways to Create Fantasy Figures, so I can't wait for this afternoon! I love reference books. Aside from learning, I just love to admire beautiful artworks. Also, they look great on the coffee table, if you're into that kind of thing. Me, I don't have enough money for a coffee table AND art/photography supplies lol!

Well, that didn't quite go as I expected. I totally want to take back the tiny stars in the background. They just don't look like stars; they don't twinkle either. Ah well. Lesson learned. Next time I'm drawing ... MONSTERS!! (Though I don't want to give any kid nightmares.)

I posted my work in progress in my previous post. Check it out! One difference is I took a picture of the final piece while the images in my WIPs are scanned. Not sure which I like better. This one from the camera has the white balance a little off.

Not exactly sure where I'm going with this. I'm thinking night sky. More trees. She's being pulled up by some stars on strings held in her hand. You can't see it but on her right hand (our left) is a cat she's kind of pulling up with her. I like how the trees turned out, but I'm not sure about her coloring - her dress and stuff. Seems pale in comparison to the trees, but i guess we'll see how that comes together once the sky background is set too. Actually, I really wish, I'd put the trees at an angle to make it more dynamic, but I'm still challenging myself by not laying out a pencil sketch first and going straight to color.



Now my biggest concern is where to put the moon lol. Which is bad because I'd already started the lighting and shadows. We'll see I guess. I better finish before this Friday for sure lol. The paper, by the way, is way bigger than my scanner could scan, and I didn't feel like stitching multiple scans in GIMP because it keeps crashing on me. I can't wait to put together my desktop onc eI get a new desk. Everything's still boxed up from the move.


Just added the sky. Left spots for the stars and the moon. The sky is pretty hard to color. You can tell where I had a fine point, then the points of my color pencils started to get stubby, so the bottom part is not as nice (imo) as the parts near the moon.


Blended and added colors to the sky. Now a little darker than before, however, that maybe due to my color levels in GIMP as well. My scanner + GIMP + laptop = sad panda face. Tonight I'll work on the stars, the ribbon tying them to her wrist and tuning the sky some more. Then I will take the final picture tomorrow (note: using my canon xti rather than my canon LiDE scanner).
This is it for now. It's still not done: I need to put more twinkling stars in the background, tiny ones. Had to round the edges because I used my scanner and the top two corners were vignetting because the paper is bigger than the scanner surface. Tomorrow I finish and take a picture! Yeay.

Firstly, sorry for the super crappy scan. Honestly, it doesn't look as anemic on my sketch book. I wish I could take a hi-res picture, but my desktop is still in a box and this laptop can't handle the processing.

Ok. So I started this drawing without sketching. That is the task I've set for myself in the following weeks. I'm one of those people for whom drawing is a process similar to labor before giving birth. It's long, arduous, and sweaty. And that's just starting a sketch.

The topic this week is "Unfold." Going straight to color, I didn't really have a plan. Every new piece of the illustration kind of unfolded itself , which, at times, both surprised and aggravated me. What I realized, though, is that in trying to do a more detailed work, I set myself to fail the exercise. Had it been the loose, more gestural style (like in Pink and Purple Garden) I wouldn't have gotten stuck in the same rut as I did when trying to do a sketch in the first place. I was too anxious to make everything perfect, which is the opposite of what I had aimed to do - to let the creativity flow. Instead, it took me 3 days of staring at my sketchbook and second guessing myself before I bit the bullet and just applied color.

Well, here's to hoping for a better next drawing :)

Ok so it's starting to shape up. I'm so tired though. I went to get some groceries around 1PM, found out I have not 1 but 2 super low tires after I loaded my purchases in the car (heavy stuff too, like cat food, water, cat litter, etc.) It was just one whole big misadventure. So I only added a little bit from where I left off in my last post.

Yep, it's completely unfinished. I have the hardest time drawing so I set myself to sketch using only color without doing an initial drawing first. I think when I use pencil and try to draw, I get so bogged down with erasing that I never commit to a shape or form. It's the same thing when I write. I delete so much that I never finish a sentence.

Color pencils are relatively new to me. I have been using markers since I started drawing again a few years back. I'm sure I used it when I was younger, but experimentally like this. In order to teach myself (although color pencils are relatively intuitive, there's some kind of learning curve), I decided to look at artists whom I admire. This is me emulating Kathy Hare's technique. I loved her button eyes, so I tried it too. Emulating is one way to learn, because you get a feel for how things are supposed to work. It can be a crutch, though, so I am trying to quickly find my own style, specially since I am trying out several different ones (see my previous post for my drawing yesterday).

I will probably finish this tomorrow. Maybe tonight if I'm lucky.

This is for (dA) Children's Illustrator Club's June topic: Hidden Garden.

I just feel so dried up when it comes to drawing. So for this illo, I just kind of went with it. No sketch, just straight up color pencil and doodled. My motto was "If I can fill it with color, it's all good!" And it took me about 1 hr with some stretching in between. I'm one of those super-anal drawers, where one illo can take me a week, even if it's SO small. I'm going to keep practicing with this doodle technique to loosen up, you know what I mean?

I made so many mistakes and you can probably see the glaring ones. I used GIMP to soften it a little so my crappy scan wasn't too bad . Maybe. Heh.

The crisp mountain air, the scary anorexic gravel and dirt roads next to some steep drops, the intimacy of family isolated in a lovely cabin...Ahhh...it was a change of scenery alright. I took my Diana F+ and some 120films and clicked to my heart's content. Or until the film ran out, whichever one was first. One valuable thing I learned is that I probably shouldn't do that because film is expensive and very finite, whereas I can actually click to my heart's content with my Canon 5d II and its 8g memory card. The power of the delete key never ceases to amaze me, and it's one of the reasons why I stay away from film.


And yet, film is fun! It's a surprise every time, specially since I can't develop it myself. I went to AZ Photo Labs here in Houston and ordered them in matte paper. It gets expensive though. My initial plan was to actually have them develop just the negatives and I'd scan them with my Canon LiDE 600F myself. But sinced I bought that scanner on Ebay and didn't apparently come with the negative film adaptor, I'd had to shell out some moolah.

These four are my favorites (I took 4 rolls, so you can see how well that turned out eh). I love how almost otherworldly they look. These particular four were taken with 100 speeds wide open (meaning I didn't use any of the negative adaptors that you put in the back of the Diana), which accounts for the vignetting.

This is a very awful scan of something that took me 2 weeks to sketch lol. It was actually supposed to be my entry for "Adapt," but you can say I've "adapted" it for this week's topic. When I see my cats bonelessly lounging around my super cluttered living room, it makes me crave some sleep and relaxation. But honestly, I just moved from MD to Houston and all these boxes I still need to open just make me want to be lazy and eat some ice cream!

Here's a video of my darling little ones before the move, where they freaked themselves out and made me jump as well lol. Notice I changed Maxie's color from tiger striped brown/black to orange just because I got tired of staring at the drawing :( You ever get that feeling?