Just some more experimenting with some cartoony faces tonight. This kind of cartoony is difficult for me because I’ve my entire drawing life I’ve been working hard to make faces more comic-book-like, which is a different kind of abstraction with different sorts of exaggeration and much more complex ciphers for facial features — at least that’s true of the kinds of comic-book-like I always tried to achieve. But I want to gain some facility with this sort of look, so expect to see some more experiments along these lines as the project progresses.

I wanted to work on trying something a little more cartoony, so tonight you get a sort-of-self-portrait:

(Estimated time: 25 minutes.)

Yes, the “background” is especially lame — I haven’t yet managed to find the right balance between “simplified” and “suckrageous.”

We just got finished watching The American President for the first time in a while, and I’ve decided that I want Aaron Sorkin to be the next President of the United States.

Or at the very least, he should script the next presidency. I’d be okay with that, too.

(Yes, this entry still counts for the 25th; I haven’t gone to bed yet, so by the rules I just made up, it counts.)

One of the areas I where I want to improve my drawing is with likenesses. I’m better at them than I used to be, but still have trouble really nailing a person’s features. A lot of the time, I think the final drawing itself is perfectly (or at least mostly) fine — like tonight’s, for instance — but it doesn’t end up looking particularly like the person the drawing is supposed to represent — again, like tonight’s. You’d never know it just by looking at it, but tonight’s piece was taken from a small picture of Summer Glau (Firefly’s River). I like the drawing itself well enough, or parts of it, anyway… but I don’t think it looks much like her. Ah, well… I’ll keep trying.

(Estimated time: 30 minutes.)

Tooth number one came out yesterday morning. (No, it had nothing to do with the car accident, thankyewverymuch — happend as she was getting ready for school.) She managed to immediately drop it, and we have no idea where it went. The Tooth Fairy had to take a note and her word for it last night.

Tooth number two came out tonight while she was in the bathtub. This one she held onto, and it’s in a small jewelry box on her bed right now.

The Tooth Fairy’s gonna be going broke pretty quickly at this rate.

Tonight’s post is a study for a project I’m doing for a friend of mine. Whatever I wind up doing it with it, I can tell you that what you see here is not exactly what’ll end up as the final version — for one, this is just kinda off and furthermore not all that exciting (though it’s an inhaler…how exciting can it be?). But it’s a start, and it was practice drawing something non-organic and something which is made out of curved plastic rather that all hard straight edges, so it was a worthwhile to attempt even if this particular attempt wasn’t quite there.

(Estimate time: 20 minutes.)

And as a bonus tonight, I can now show you the results from yesterday’s purposefully-sketchy drawing, though I’m going to put it under the fold so as not to spam you with too many images at once:

Read the rest of this entry »

I almost don’t want to post this one, just because it’s a precursor to something else, but I also don’t want to miss a day’s posting, especially when I actually did draw something today. (And by my own rules for the project, if I don’t post it today, I don’t get to post it at all.) So the following picture is purposefully cartoony and kind of sketchy and using only one line weight. But I’m not explaining why quite yet.

(Estimated time: 20 minutes. On this part, anyway.)

More to come on this one in the next few days, I hope. But if you’re burning for something a little bit more complete, you can go check out my newest image up over at Deviant Art. It might look a little familiar if you’ve been following along with this project.

Also: Go Patriots! Official Knee-Jerk Prediction: Patriots 42, Giants 19.

Since I punked out last night and didn’t draw anything yesterday, I took advantage of the commitment-free afternoon to put a little bit more effort into today’s drawing:

(Estimated time: 90 minutes.)

For those of you who don’t read comics or watch cartoons, the fellow above is J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, longtime staple of the Justice League.  (I find it mildly interesting that all four of the superheroes I’ve drawn for this project have been members of DC Comics’ Justice League.  I’m going to have to switch over and draw some Marvel heroes at some point.)  This drawing, as you can probably tell, wasn’t finished in ink but rather just in pencil — I got some new soft leads for my favorite trusty lead holder (mechanical pencil) yesterday and wanted to see what I could do with it… and discovered that, surprisingly, I’m happier finishing these drawings in ink right now.  I say “surprisingly” because ink has never really been my forte, but I’m getting more and more comfortable with it and getting happier and happier with the results.  Yay practice!

I can see things I think I could have done better, but I’m pretty happy with it overall.  I definitely feeling like I’ve improved since the beginning of the month, and I think most of that improvement has come from being more engaged in the process and putting more of myself into what I’m working on.

And with that, I’m going to go watch my kids play in the snow!

Went out to dinner and Barnes and Noble with the family; too tire to do a proper card tonight, but didn’t want to let the day pass without posting one.  (On the plus side, though:  picked up America: The Book by Jon Stewart et al for seven bucks in the budget section at B&N!)