March Sketchbook - Week 2 (Patreon)

Mar 8th - The focus here was on motion and pushing the pose to emphasize the movement rather than replicating everything exactly. I used more Adorkastock photos and one of the fawns from last week. With all of them I tried to see what lines of action were present, and then exaggerate those sweeping lines. The first one (with the sword and shield) is by far the weakest- you can see where I lacked confidence because the lines are hairy and uncertain. The arm holding the shield is the best part of it, despite having the fewest lines and being the least resolved; it still conveys the motion and strength. I tried to carry that into the others and use more confident, bold strokes where I felt like the motion could be emphasized best. There are still ways I feel these could be pushed or exaggerated, but they were good practice. I'm also using the HB pencil brush by MacaLabs, which is incredible for mimicking real media.

March 9th - the focus here was on volume and mark-making. I've always really admired Claire Wendling for her lyrical sketches and so I compiled some of her cat sketches, along with photo reference of my fur babies, Chloe and Sebastian. In the below sketches I tried to be slower and more deliberate about my choses in lines, marks, shapes, movement, drawing on things I'd been using in the previous day's study. I'm actually really happy with these sketches. It was fun to play around with the different expressions and poses, in particular because Chloe is a chunky stump with resting bitch face, and Seb is a slinky bastard with a permanent case of derp. I tried to use the types of lines and hatching Wendling does to capture the volumes and anatomy. Cat anatomy can be difficult to draw from life because fur obscures what's going on sometimes, so I'm mostly relying on my knowledge from anatomical study in college. Sphynx cats are great for circumventing the fur problem too :P

March 10th - Shoes, boots, footwear... I'll not lie, this was a brutal exercise. I find feet harder to draw than hands, so I probably should have started with foot studies, but I wanted to build up a better internal library of footwear designs and how to structure a shoe. While an interesting exercise, I struggled a lot. I'm happy I did it though, it was a learning experience for sure. I realized while doing this that clothing studies in general are something I so rarely do, so that'll be another thing to try. And in case it wasn't obvious, I'm really digging the HB pencil from macalabs.

March 11th - Hit a bit of a snag, I wasn't sure what I wanted to draw and went with hairstyles, but I struggle to find refs I was excited to work from, so I just went with what I got. It was a good exercise, but not my favourite so far in terms of enjoyment or satisfaction with the results. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I'd leant into stylization over loyalty to the reference. I might try again when I've gathered refs I'm happier to be working from. For now, this was a good way of studying the way strands fall in different styles, but it was pretty exclusive to wavy-ish hair.

March 12th - My focus had started to slip at this point in the week. I wasn't sure why, but satisfaction with what I was drawing had gone down with these. It was just some simple studies of a hyena, in particular their big toothy gobs. Looking back over the week, I think the difficulty lay in reference loyalty. If you look at the cat drawings, they aren't loyal to the photos at all, I've extrapolated my own knowledge of shape and contrasting lines between straights and curves to achieve more appeal in the pose. Here, I've stuck to the drawing. I may try doing an exercise next week where I draw from photo at first and then try to draw from memory, or even just draw the same pose but with a focus on exaggeration and appeal.

March 13th - By the weekend, I was pretty exhausted from other stuff I was working on, so I just took a break and doodled Dauntless in a blood rage. I used to do 'vent' doodles a lot and they often worked for getting out some frustrations. These are messier and a little less true to his facial structure, but they served their purpose lol!

March 14th - One of the things unrelated to my daily sketching was bugging me, and it's a character in a book I'm writing. I've struggled with Gretchen's personality for a while. I'm waffling between who she should be and how deeply I want to tie her to the overall plot, or make her subplot thematically related but otherwise unaffected by the Big Plot. Decided that maybe working out a drawing of her could help to realize her character better. Initially, she was a bit like a goth Daria with an affinity for potion-making, but as I've drawn her and been working through her story she's become a bit more bookish. Still reclusive though. These helped for getting a better grasp of her in any case! Sometimes, I find I 'write' the character before I design them, and other times it's the other way around like with Dauntless. With Gretchen, it's become a bit of both.

Though the week has been frustrating, I'm still pleased to have some more doodles done and worked out. Sometimes, the most growth comes from these moments where you feel like you're pulling your hair out and not 'getting it.' Just pushing through and examining what I liked or didn't like helps. Next week I want to do more volume/mark-making, plus a loyal reference study versus an exaggerated one. Plus whatever else I need to doodle when my brain's not working!

I hope these weird sketch diaries are fun to look at or even give you artists ideas of things to study/doodle. Onwards and upwards :)