Daisy Ridley pencil drawing

It's been a while since I've posted any updates here. I'm not done practicing making art, I've just been spending a lot of time recently practicing things I've never been very good at, like drawing human figures/poses without a reference, and while I'm making good progress, I'm not ready to start showing any of that yet.

I do have something today, though. Since I've been spending time practicing things I'm bad at, I needed to take a break from that and remind myself that I can draw things that look good, so I did a pencil drawing from a photo reference. Because there's a big national and religious holiday coming up soon, in keeping with the holiday spirit, I drew Daisy Ridley.

Sketches of Daisy Ridley as Rey

I'm trying to re-teach myself how to draw real people again, so I drew some sketches of Daisy Ridley's character Rey from the Force Awakens trailers. They're pretty quick sketches and a bit rough, but I feel like I've made some progress and learned some things while drawing these three sketches, which is the important thing.

Assault Android Peanut

I drew another assault android from Assault Android Cactus: Peanut.

No scanned version this time, because my scanner was blowing out the lighter colors too much, so you just get a photo taken with my phone. I bought some fancy new artist pens (Amazon link), and they're way better than drawing with a Sharpie. Having different size tips for doing bold lines and fine details is really nice, and the pens put down really dark ink that doesn't smudge or bleed through the paper, even in spots where I put down a lot of ink, like around the eyes and midsection. The colors are colored pencil.

I noticed when it was too late to change it that the hand holding the drill is facing the wrong way. Whoops, oh well. Who knows how an android's wrists work, anyway.

As always, you can find the work in progress shots in my Sketches / WIP gallery.

Feathered T. rex sketch

Quick sketch of a feathered T. rex. What a majestic and fearsome beast, hear her powerful roar.

I drew a Cactus

(From Assault Android Cactus, one of my favorite games to come out this year.)

I started the sketch with a pencil, and in recognition of Inktober, I did the line work with a fine point Sharpie, then finished off the coloring with colored pencils. I used the character select screen in the game as a reference.

I'm not quite as psyched with how this turned out as I am with my Inkling drawing, probably because this was done on paper where I couldn't keep hitting undo over and over to fix every little mistake, but this is probably more representative of where my actual drawing ability is at right now. I definitely need to work on my confidence in my line art, because drawing with a marker on real paper where I can't hit the undo key if I make a mistake makes me incredibly nervous.

You can find the in-progress photos in my sketches/WIP gallery.

I bought a sketchbook that I'm filling with practice sketches, but most of them are very practice sketchy and aren't worth even putting in my sketches gallery. I'll be sure to keep posting the ones that aren't completely terrible, though. 

Inkling amiibo drawing

I just finished a piece of artwork I've been working on for a few days: the Inkling from Splatoon, using the Inkling amiibo as a reference. You can find the finished piece in the Finished Artwork page, and a breakdown of the process of creating it, from the initial sketch, the line art, coloring and shading, to the finished piece, in the Work-In-Progress page.

This was the first time I've sat down to draw something in a really long time, and while it took me a bit to get my bearings, I have to say it felt really good, and I'm looking forward to drawing more.

The line art in particular was a learning process. I've never been very confident in my line art, and it showed in my first attempt. I decided I was going to teach myself to be more confident, so scrapped my first attempt and forced myself to start drawing quick, flowing lines. At first, I had to undo and re-draw every line a bunch of times until I got them right, but by the time I was done, I was doing that a lot less. Most of the lines in the legs and shoes, in particlar, were done in one or two tries. I feel like I've grown a lot as an artist just over the course of making this one drawing.

It's funny, because I've been away from creating art for so long that I was certain that my skills had atrophied, and it was going to be a long slog to get back up to the level of the work I was doing 10-15 years ago when I was at the top of my game and doing this stuff every day. I think that fear was a big part of what kept me away from it for so long. In a lot of ways, though, this picture is an improvement over some of what I was doing back then; certainly I've never done line art this clean. That feels pretty amazing. Not that I don't still have room to improve, because I absolutely do, but now I'm looking forward to working towards that instead of dreading it.