99 Drawings:100 Days

Well yesterday I tried drawing a line drawing of Kanye West that didn’t turn out quite right. I had a lot of trouble trying to draw his nose. I felt like giving up on the drawing many times but kept at it until I finished it. The drawing came out larger than I wanted. I was trying the draw the image smaller, but I am having trouble scaling and figuring out how big the picture is going to be from the start. I was trying to map out boundaries for the drawing, but as I began drawing, the image exceeded the boundaries and I had to give in for the picture to look decent. Well I’m going to start on my next drawing now.

That one day I was sick really threw me off. I was supposed to draw at least two pictures between today and yesterday, but that didn’t happen. For one thing, after I shot the video, I had to edit it, and I am still getting used to editing video under linux. Therefore, the editing took quite a while. So, the videos are going to be pretty basic until I learn how to do some of the fancier stuff. Second, the picture of Angelina Jolie that I drew today took most of the day. I figured I would bang it out in two or three hours, but this wasn’t the case. In fact, I just finished it a few minutes ago. I think I captured a pretty good likeness of her but I know that in the future I will be able to do better. Her eyes were really tough for me and that’s the part I tackle first in a drawing. But all in all I feel pretty good about it.

Well it’s time for the week in review. Sorry for the background noise in the video; I forgot to turn the heater off.

Well I am still drawing and starting to feel more confident in my line drawing. Today, rather tonight, I drew a line drawing of Kiefer Sutherland. I am finding that I like drawing at night better than in the day. As before, I had to tinker with the levels in Gimp to get the outline to show okay on the web. It took between 2.5 and 3 hours to do the line drawing. I like drawing slow and the time seemed to fly by. Also I have not applied any shading because I am still concentrating on my line drawing. I don’t know if I achieved a real likeness or not, but I definitely feel I captured some of the features. I find that I draw better when I begin the drawing with the eyes. When I was reading how-to books, they always suggested getting the overall contour of the head and then working on the features. I tried this but the result was always a grossly disproportionate drawing.

Things to work on:

I want to work on the smoothness and fluidity of my line. This is something I consciously think about and try to apply during the drawing. Also I am working towards achieving a better likeness in the line drawing.

Well I was kind of depressed at the beginning of the day but forced myself to get past it. One of my biggest hurdles in getting started drawing is finding something to draw. So today I found a picture of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and decided to draw it. Shading is throwing me off so I decided to hold off on it and just do a line drawing. I think it came out pretty good. I feel confident about it. I know it could be better, but it is a definite improvement. The line drawing is really light so I can go back and shade it when I feel ready, but I had to tinker with the values in Gimp to make the drawing dark enough for viewing on the web.

Well today it was harder to start but I did. I tried to do a couple of figure drawings but didn’t feel too confident about them. I couldn’t really find any nude reference photos that I liked. I just couldn’t get in a good drawing mood, but I did draw something so I didn’t cheat. Well I just have to keep powering forward.

Well today is the day that I officially kick off my short term goal of drawing everyday for 30 days. Today I drew a portrait from a book a heads that I bought called Heads. The head I drew looks nothing like the head in the book. In fact the head in the book was one of a female and this one looks more like a male. I do see some symbolic elements in it now after I have drawn it. While I was drawing it, I really didn’t see them. The eyes look kind of symbolic to me, but I was happy just to have finished it. I’ve been having the problem of not starting or starting but not finishing. So, this was a real accomplishment for me. This is only the first drawing in the challenge and I don’t think it is too shabby. As I practice, I will improve.

I also drew a couple of things from an Eddie Bauer catalog. I drew an image that was in the waist down view. I need to be more confident with my lines and better with my proportions. I also drew a small image of a messenger bag.

Well that’s all the drawing I did today. The rest of the day was spent helping my sister with her history project. Overall I feel pretty good about the first day of the challenge.

My official 30 days starts on Monday. I decided this because I took most of this week just to get my blog setup and get things in place so that next week I can just draw, write, and post to my blog. I think every Friday or Saturday I am going to do like a week in review video. I will probably post the edited video post in lieu of a written post. I really like doing video posts, but I’m still getting used to editing under the linux system with different software than I’m used to using. It’s definitely a learning curb to say the least.

Well, enough of my technical challenges, lets move on to what I’m doing today. Today I decided to get sort of a pre-challenge drawing critique from an outside source to gauge my drawing skills at the beginning of the challenge. The critique is from Matt Archambault, a teacher at SVA who offers drawing dvds and, more recently, critiques online. I found his site a few months ago and I really like his drawing style. The critique was very reasonably priced so I decided to go ahead and try it. I should get it back within a week. The entire process is conducted through email which is great for me. I sent 5 drawings that give a pretty well-rounded view of where I’m at in my skill set right now. If this critique thing works out pretty good I might get another one after the 30 day challenge or at least at the end of the 100 day challenge.

Drawings I sent for the critique: