Friday, September 30, 2016

Eezy Doodles #3 (My first ink drawings!)


I've been wanting to have a drawing pen for a long time now. Today I got the brilliant idea of, oh I don't know. . . just BUYING one? I wonder what took me so long from getting this idea. Maybe I subconsciously thought that I wasn't ready for it yet? I don't know. . . Anyway, I present to you my first ever sketchbook page where I use a drawing pen.

Just like I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to draw some cartoons today. I came up with 2 random and weird cartoon character ideas. The first is a zombie kid named  Dead Ed and next to him is a strange girl who may or may not have the power to manipulate time named Chrona. I wanted to draw a third character but there was not enough space left for a new character and name logo so I decided to draw the two new characters again.

Today was really challenging but also new and exciting. I was very worried at first but using a drawing pen turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. Especially since, I would already have a pencil sketch to simply mimic when putting in the ink. Ink definitely looks a lot better than graphite but I don't want to use drawing pens too much. They're more expensive than drawing pencils and I suspect they run out of ink faster than pencils lose graphite.

The two characters I came up with are pretty cool, especially Dead Ed. I may actually use him again in the future. I'm not so sure about Chrona, though, she doesn't appeal to me that much. I can imagine Dead Ed being a funny character by trying to blend in with normal human society but what does Chrona do? I guess only time will tell if I decide to incorporate these characters into my art in the future.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

A Figure Drawing


I don't feel particularly motivated today. This drawing is based off a tutorial much like so many of my previous uploads but that's not the problem. The problem is I wanted to draw more original cartoons today but I couldn't muster up the energy to do so. Plus I had so many obligations and distractions today so it was hard to even get started. I did actually doodle some cartoons on some notebooks for practice but nothing on my sketchbooks. I expect that tomorrow, I'll sketch some toons either first or second thing in the morning.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 38-39.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Comic: That Forgettable Cartoon - "Airplane Mode"


It's been a while since I last drew a comic strip. It goes so far back that I haven't even started this blog yet when I last made a comic. Although this blog is fairly new so it hasn't been that long. So yeah, this is my first comic upload on this site.

I've always been a fan of humor in comics even as a child. As I was drawing this, I couldn't help but think, drawing funny comics was something that I would inevitably get into at some point. It was not a matter of "IF" but "WHEN".

This is the third of a series of comics I call "That Forgettable Cartoon". The earlier two comics, I have in my sketchbooks but I have not yet decided to upload them. Mostly because I was still very focused on drawing and instead of giving the drawings an online presence. I may upload them in the future, but for now, this is all I want to show.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Learning To Draw Human Head Proportions Part 2




This is a continuation of what I learned yesterday about traditional human head proportions. I did a much better job with this drawing than I did in the last one but there is still big room for improvement. The hair, especially the ponytail, could use more practice and the eye could use a little bit more tweaking. Everything else I'm perfectly fine with, though. I think I did a good job.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 37.

Learning Human Head Proportions


I'll admit, this has to be one of the most embarrassingly bad drawings I've uploaded on this blog so far. It's not really that bad, I think it's just relatively bad compared to my other drawings. His stare just looks really odd and eerie. But this is all I've drawn today and I've committed to making at least one upload on this blog per day so here it is despite its haunting appearance.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 36.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Eezy Doodlez #2

I didn't feel like in the mood to learn a new lesson in drawing today so I decided to do some more doodling. I ended up drawing on five pages of my sketchbook while I expected to draw much less than that. Today was a good day.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Learning Classical Human Proportions


I used to wonder if I ever needed to go to art school or attend some art workshops in order to learn art. I was wrong, all I really needed was some art materials, the commitment to practice and the commitment to take advantage of books and the internet. Before, I'd struggle to draw cartoons, now I'm just casually learning life drawing. Don't get me wrong, I'm still an amateur but I'd rather be that than be stuck not being able to escape from the beginner phase.

The drawings above is based on examples in the book (referenced below) on a lesson about human proportion. If you're an art student, you probably already know about the whole "8-heads proportion" idea. I learned about it in another video I watched a few months ago but at the time I didn't really take it that seriously. Now, I've finally put it into practice.



The video above is done by a guy named Shoo Rayner, by the way. I highly recommend you subscribe to his YouTube channel if you're interested in learning how to draw or simply like videos of other people drawing. I've learned a lot from his videos and they're fun to watch too.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 34-35.

Friday, September 23, 2016

First Page of "Eezy Doodlez"



 
 Well, I didn't want to procrastinate on this so I decided to practice some cartoon creativity by doodling in the middle of a lecture. This is the first in what I'm going to call the "Eezy Doodlez" series. Not bad for an introductory cover drawing but the ink got messed up in some places. The first (real) page includes characters that are going to be in my 2D platformer game project which is currently in development. (You can find and follow the game here: http://gamejolt.com/games/kzzzzzzzzt/166162)

That's all for this post. I hope I really do get better at drawing cartoons while doing this series.

Animals! Who doesn't like animals?

I'm a bit tired today so I won't write much. Here are some drawings of animals based on examples in the drawing book I've been reading.


 

Man, I've had a lot to do today. I'm exhausted, I'm going to go watch some cartoons or play video games or something. Thank God it's Friday too.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 32-33.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Sketching some scenery from my house


The drawing book I've been reading has given me some more tips on drawing landscapes. It said that it's a good idea to draw the view outside your window because it's usually the most convenient. So I did but I didn't bother to draw my actual window, just the view outside even though the example on the book showed the window included in the drawing.

Later that afternoon, I wanted to do another landscape sketch so I took a picture of my backyard and went did a sketch of that.



I didn't want to add in that much detail though. Just the basic shapes, and some plants with leaves. It ended up being more one-point perspective practice.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, pp 30-31.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Learning To Draw Plants


This is also from the book I mentioned on the previous post. To be honest, I think I did a pretty mediocre job on this one. It was harder than I thought it would be. I tried my best to draw the petals and leaves as accurately as the book portrayed but they just didn't come out right. I still learned from the experience but I feel like I could do better with enough practice.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, p 29.

Learning Aerial Perspective



I am currently reading a drawing tutorial book by Barrington Barber titled "The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists". It's a good thing to have if you're still grasping the basics of drawing.

Anyway, the drawing above is based on one of the lessons in the book. Specifically, a lesson on aerial perspective. Aerial perspective is the idea that the further away an object is, the less details and strength in texture you would give it. Objects further away are also softer and fainter. This is my first time learning about this concept. It seems like a good introduction into landscape drawing.

Reference page below.

Reference(s):

Barrington Barber 2015. The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists, p 28.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A series of quick drawings for my brother's birthday


It was my brother's birthday today and I wanted to do something special by drawing something for him. Trouble was, I couldn't figure out what. I came up with an idea of drawing a series of sketches of the party scene. Because I decided to draw while the party was going on however, I ended up trying to do things too quickly and too unfocused. Not to mention that I'm still not that good at drawing so I didn't even like most of what I made today. Well, except for my last drawing but I'll get to that later. Let's get to how I decided to start.


I figured I'd be drawing cartoon people so, before the party began, I spent about 15 minutes practicing random cartoon sketches of people the best way I could and in my own style. Not too bad, not too good. It's practice though, just something I do everyday. But I enjoyed it, alone in my room just the way I like it.




When the party began, I tried to draw the food table. It was a disaster. I learned not the drawing mistakes I was making but that I'm better off drawing alone by myself in a room sitting down and focused rather than standing up (because I didn't have a chair to sit down on) in an open room with people while talking to other people at the same time. Plus, it generally looks awful. It was still good practice though. That's a good thing.





Are you wondering why 80% of this page is empty? It's not because I didn't have enough time or I didn't think I was good enough to continue. I just legit got bored. Plus, it was a mistake to try to engage in a task that I'm not very good at yet in an environment that's very distracting. I just didn't want to spend much energy anymore, I just wanted to enjoy the party by this point. But before that. . .


Of course, I needed to draw this at some point. I have a feeling that this is the only thing I should have done today in the first place. The text in the oval to the right reads "Here is a super generic birthday greeting because I couldn't think of anything special to draw for you. Also, I'm bored and tired and I'd rather take a rest and enjoy the party rather than think of more things to draw." I personally presented it to him when I was done and to my surprise, he liked it. I like to think of the joke text as putting my unique spin to an otherwise truly generic drawing. I guess drawing skill alone is not always what makes certain artworks special to some people.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Toy Vehicles Are Cool


This is a follow-up to my previous post where I found some old toys I used to play with and came up with the idea of drawing them for fun. First thing that caught my attention were some vehicles. So I took the three that I liked the most and drew them.

First, I drew the yellow racing car. It feels like the perspective is slightly off but it's simple and okay.

Second, the army helicopter. By far the best job of the three. I started with a simple cylinder and ended up with a sketch that's actually looks pretty decent. I didn't think it'd come out the way it did given it's the most detailed of the three toys.

Last but not least, the police car. It's not the best that I could have drawn it. Most of the straight lines are kinda wobbly and proportion is kind of off. But other than that, not too bad.

Drawing these was difficult but satisfying. I have a small fascination for how vehicles look. I have some other vehicular toys including a tank which I'm saving for another drawing session. Tanks are cool.

I found some more old toys! Lots of reference material!


When I first started my drawing habit, it did not occur to me to re-open the four containers my parents kept my toys in when I stopped playing with them years ago. Opening them felt like re-discovering a part of my past that I do not appreciate as much as I should have. I want to use most of them as reference for drawing practice but I can't help but get the feeling that I should use them for more than that. It feels like there are an infinite amount of possibilities for how I can use these toys. It's like I want to play with them again but in a more creative way than my child self did.

Hmmm. . . .

Sunday, September 18, 2016

A Toy Battleship


I found a toy battleship lying in my house somewhere. I don't know who owned it or where it's from. Man, I really must live in a messy house if I somehow ended up finding something of unknown origin. Anyway, I decided to clean and keep it because it was the perfect thing to draw for today.




It was a lot harder for me to draw than I initially expected but it came out alright. It's largely drawn freehand although I could have used the help of a ruler more. It's certainly better than when I was 15 and I decided to try to draw a computer mouse and quickly gave up because I found it too difficult. A damn computer mouse! It does not require much expertise to draw the above toy but surely one could say that there's definitely progress.

Drawing this gave me an idea of sketching other kinds of toys now. I have loads of old toys kept in some containers in a closet that I have not opened in years. It might be fun to check them out some time so I can have more material to draw.

Reference(s):

Well, technically I used the toy battleship as the reference.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

One-Point Perspective Practice


Big thanks to studentartguide.com for providing an article called "One Point Perspective Drawing: The Ultimate Guide" [link below] which is a staggeringly long and detailed resource for learning about the first lesson on perspective drawing. I decided take full advantage of their work to improve my skills on perspective. I drew some of lines with the help of a ruler but many of them were drawn freehand because the article suggested that it might also be a good idea. I probably wouldn't use freehand so much if I'm working on a drawing like this but I found it surprisingly easy for me to draw straight lines without the help of a ruler. I used to be crap at drawing even simple straight lines when I first started practicing this hobby.

Okay, now for the next one. . .

 
The article included a tutorial on how to use one-point perspective to draw floating 3D letters. Heh. .  I like to call this one "Putting hard work into HARD WORK" because there were so many lines to draw. It makes me think about just how much more effort will be required as I decide to up my art standards as I improve my skills. It's both daunting and exciting to me.

I didn't finish reading the entire article mentioned above yet but I'm going to go back to it to learn more and do more of the exercises some other time. Right now, I'm taking a break.


Reference(s):

http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/one-point-perspective-drawing

Friday, September 16, 2016

Shading Practice #2


This one is pretty self-explanatory.

Reference(s):

The Fundamentals of Drawing by Barrington Barber, Page 26

Thursday, September 15, 2016

My Daily Routine (simplified)



I decided to draw my daily routine without all the complex life situations and stuff and only portray my usual goals for the day. I have quite a few habits I usually keep consistent each day like watching YouTube and of course, drawing but they mostly fall into one of these five categories: Thinking, Learning, Creating, Sharing, and Meditating. That last one is not exactly a category because it's an actual direct practice but you could say that moments when I sit on a chair in solitude and in the quiet for 5 minutes falls into the category of meditation.

I'm not trying to be pretentious, of course. I'm not perfect at the habits that I do and I procrastinate a lot. Sometimes way too much. But all that matters to me is persistence and consistency, focusing on these makes it easier to keep the positive habits.

Reference(s):

Any real number multiplied by zero.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Random Doodles #2


More random character doodles just like yesterday. Right now, I'm just focusing on line art. I barely did any shading at all.

Reference(s):

Nothing here but us chickens.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Random Doodles #1


I had no specific idea today. I just drew some random cartoon character design ideas. The first one (from the left) is a character I already drew multiple times before but here he has with a few slight changes. The second one is nerdy-type girl. She didn't come out as good as I hoped. Probably going to try to drew her again but better at some point. The last one is my favorite, but I'm not sure if its legs are strong enough to hold up its huge boulder of a head.

Reference(s): None

Monday, September 12, 2016

Shading Practice

 This one is pretty self-explanatory. Although, the photo does not fully show the shading done in the actual drawing. It looks too light. Maybe I should have fixed it in post in PhotoShop. Meh. . . I just felt kinda lazy today.

As for the actual drawing, meh, it could be way better. I'm still pretty mediocre at shading shadows and working on lighting. Although I was in a sort of meditative state while I was drawing it. It was kind of fun actually. Not really beating myself up for being crap like I used to. Somehow I think that matters way more than just being good at drawing.

Reference(s):


Saturday, September 10, 2016

A Cartoon Character based off of Alex DeLarge


A few minutes after posting the last entry, I came up with an idea of a cartoon character based on Alex's design. I named him 'Gulliver' based on the British slang term that Alex uses in the film that means "head". He's a walking orange who is usually seen sporting a big grin. He brings a knife with him at all times and wears a bowler hat (which I forgot to shade to dark gray). On the bottom left, you can see him stalking an innocent pedestrian (who is also one of the OC's I made before I started this blog).

Good or bad, I personally find him one of my favorite original characters I've created so far. I've drawn comics in my sketchbooks before so I may draw Gulliver in one of them at some point in the future.

No references this time. I didn't need any.

Alex DeLarge


I been wanting to do this since yesterday. Sketch out Alex Delarge, the main character from the film 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Reference(s):

Friday, September 9, 2016

3 Little Chibis


I'm not that fond of manga and anime. Much less chibi art. Much less actually drawing it. But I tried to do it anyway just to see if I could. First, I found that I really don't enjoy copying anime art styles more than I enjoy copying western cartoon culture. Second, I also found that drawing anime hair "properly" is much harder than I thought.

As for the drawings themselves, I don't think I did a great job but it wasn't too bad either. I might actually do more of these in the future just for the heck of it. The several months of practice so far have gotten me from drawing characters out of circles and squares back in late 2014-early 2015 to this. I feel like I'm slowly inching my way from "amateur" to "mediocre". It's not great but it's way better than no progress at all.

Reference(s):
http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-a-Chibi-Character

Thursday, September 8, 2016

84 Faces of Practice

Man, this one took a surprising amount of willpower because it was so repetitive but I'm glad I made it through. Though it was kinda fun experimenting with the many possibilities of drawing a simple cartoon face. Kinda makes me think of the possibilities of more complex faces and right up to realistic portrayals. The permutations are almost infinite!

 
Reference(s):

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Muriel? . . .


This time, here's some fan art of a popular cartoon character crossed over with an old creepypasta classic. I'm personally happy with the way I drew Courage and even Slenderman a little bit. The background, however, is just garbage. I don't know how to draw a creepy dark forest. Welp, practice practice practice, I suppose. I'll get there eventually.

Reference(s):

❤ Technika Q ❤


This drawing is fan art expressing my love for the DJMAX Technika series. Technika is a rhythm game series popularized by music-game-based DJMAX franchise. If you've never played DJMAX Technika before, you probably should. It's one of the best and most addictive arcade rhythm games out there. This particular drawing is based on the mobile app version, DJMAX Technika Q.


Reference(s):

I do not own this image