Bad News: Fewer Posts. Good News: More Skillz. Medium News: #YeauLeau

You guys, I have too much to do.

I think my time would be better spent drawing bodies (as in "Human bodies" and not "Corpses", although I suppose they're technically one and the same, sort of ) and mastering anatomy instead of blogging my brains out. Instead of flapping my gums I need to be working now. My Flash class is busy, I have to paint with paints, and I have to draw a million trillion bodies. I just don't have time, really. I'll try doing a few posts a week. It's also 10:17 and I'm barely awake. But I think I really mean this.

I'll just be updated less.

Oh yeah, the other thing I wanted to say was this (well, two things): This blog was started to improve my art. It has been taking too much time. I think it served a purpose in helping me realize that improving at art is really something I want and love. So that's good.

The other thing is that I feel like I'm a slave to the blog. Because of that I can't fail, because I always have to have something to post and show you. So while it started out with best intentions, I think I need to be free to make a bit more of a mess without needed to worry about you guys hating me. Not that you do. But you know. It's negative pressure to try and impress the whole world when I should be more worried about dumping all my time into practice and learning.

So I'll be around. But right now I'm going to brush my teeth and go to bed.

Tomorrow I'm going to go for a run.

Then I'm going to do some worry-free failure-laden artwork. And that's good! But the only person allowed to see is my fiance.

I'm totally rambling, what am I saying

I sum it up like this:

I love artwork and have a lot of it to do and this blog has been helpful in teaching that to me but now it's something that can be scary when I need to fail.

F.I.L.O, I'd rather do nuthin else
If I follow my heart to the last pulse
Like the last man down in the towering inferno of Babylon
First In Last Out 

I'll update again as soon as I can!

...And I'll probably have to clarify what exactly I'm trying to say next time I post. 

School.

School will be busy. It will keep me busy. I have things to do now, things to work on. We spent a few hours talking about landmarks on the human body and it's got me thinking. I don't want to upload all my failures and bad drawings/sketches because I don't want to be pressured not to make those, failing is an important part of growing. Hopefully I have time to work on things I like in addition to things I need.

Here are a couple things:

And I hope the blog is easier on the eyes now.

;)

Welllllllll

Today was good, I had the last of my classes today. I think I'll be pushed and it will be hard, but that's probably a good thing? We can only hope.

Here's some sketchbook:

BONUS: Some dudes I drew during art history

Anatomy is for chumps!

Just kidding. My anatomy and figure structure class is looking to be quite enlightening and useful. We'll take it up to eleven.

Here's a guy

Might do some more with this later. I might not. But looking at it now there are a couple places I could push some values and make it more better. Also, I'm perplexed by how the hilt for the sword he's holding fits into the empty sheath. 

But now I have to go eat so I can go to classsss

Back to school!

HEY! Sorry about the current state of the blog layout, it looks like puke, I know, it looked better in my mind then it does in reality. I'm gonna try to get to it this week.

School starts tomorrow! I'm excited! I'm also enraged. I had to pay for classes like 2 weeks ago or they would have been dropped. I'm STILL waiting for the online system to let me in and look at my class syllabus, materials list, etc. STUPID! Why do they force you to pay for classes when so frequently schedules change and move around? It's ridiculous! They demand money for something that just might change, then they'll have to reimburse you or you might have to pay more! I'm angry? Anyway, wish me luck. I have an art history class, and (unlike most of my peers) I don't particularly care for it. So it's a bit of a drag. 

Here's some stuff from today:

Update on this guy. Some changes, not much. Just wanted you to know I'm still working at it. His head is misshapen, I think. I hate his hair. Not sure what I'm gonna do about it.

This is what I filled up over the last couple summer months. Off to the right you can kinda see the start of some loose leaf papers, I didn't realize they didn't make it into the photo. That's my sister in the background, she wanted to participate ;)

Finally. And sketchdump

We're finally moving along now. Ugh. I'm glad things are finally working out. I'm getting it!

Few more hours on this and I'll be good to go. I glanced at Facebook today, and saw that Diablo III has an ad with a Crusader on it, looked similar to my paladin here, they're stealing my thunder. BLIZZARD! You fiends! But the guy they had in the advertisement is wielding his mace left-handed, you'll almost never see lefties in pictures I draw.

Here's what I've got after today:

And some sketches. They're in blue pen. Richard would kill me if he knew I was doing this (in class he said something along the lines of, "What kind of an artist uses a blue pen!?"), but this darn blue pen is working well. It's a good one! I'm constantly pleased with the sketches it cranks out. These first ones are from last night...

The HELLBOW! DESTROY!

This is exhausting

Gonna vent a bit.

I've spent hours and hours on this since doing the initial sketch. It started as one of the things I posted yesterday, and, as you can clearly see, has changed completely and totally.

I started working on the sketch by going over lines, trying to keep the integrity of the original silhouette but still add detail and visual interest. As I go, I think I get hung up on details. So I start adding shadows or highlights to areas too early and things get lopsided or inconsistent. So, blessed with digital magic, I begin slowly going over everything, "Fixing" everything.

It takes tons of time and makes me angry. I realize that I should spend a lot of time on the illustration itself, making sure everything works, but I think that it's my original sketch that's weak. I need to spend more time on these things so when I get to adding more it's easy to see where to put the magic. 

Instead, I just go over stuff again and again, flipping the canvas horizontally over and over trying to make something work.

It probably just comes down to needing to work on the basics more, so that my starting point isn't in the negative numbers but at zero instead. 

It could be a million other things (such as starting details far too early instead of nailing the values and contrast). 

I suppose this is why I devote my time and soul to this- So I can learn.

Was it time wasted?

Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't. If nothing else, I can start from zero tomorrow.

I'm gonna go decompress with my book and some fun sketching, have a nice day.

And you get a million bonus points if you can guess which of yesterday's images this started as.

Working

Here are some sketches from today, I have one in progress (and I even had it uploaded) but I was looking at it while I had it uploaded and it was so spotty and inconsistent.
Here are some sketches, One of these was worked on for like 4 hours today and I'm finally figuring out how to do what I want with it, but that's secret and you can't know yet

I Lost My Water Bottle

So I'm dehydrated and have an amazing headache. Where did I put it? Your guess is as good as mine. Jeepers. Anyway, here's some stuff I did today

I used reference to draw a ton of faces, then I turned the page and tried to remember what I had learned... 

Game Over: Summer Goals Recap Week the Fifteenth (15th), Debriefing

I'm callin' it good. We're done here. Summer Goals were created to give me some things to work on for artistic improvement. I did work on some things, and drew lots n lots. Here, I multiplied the number of goals per week (three) by the total number of weeks I kept track of summer goals (fifteen). That's forty-five. I then totaled up the number of times I did one of my goals for the week. I counted up and got fourteen.

14/45

31%

Is it really that bad? Wow. Hahaha! Whatever, I ended up with some portfolio piece(s), it turned out well.

SUCCESS!!!

School starts on the 25th, there's gonna be a lot to do!

Here are some sketches from tha sketchbewk, might be fun to take these to a more finished state when I get a second

BONUS: Dome-i-cile

Thinking of calling this done, yea or nay?

EDIT: I'm not satisfied with this, looking at it again... I need to tweak some things. But this will do for now.

I don't have time for this

School is almost over, but I'm still just as busy as ever. Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I worked on a bunch of stuff but it's not significant enough for me to post it. Look at this hat guy in the mean time:

I want to animate it so it looks like he's breathing and so the hat goes up and down.

... And so many of my shapes are the same. I'd like to address this.

Okay, back to work

Just workin' on stuff

Works in progress!

This guy is coming along...

Messed up the wizard's face so it would match the next one. Still working on it...

He took out a giant or something.

Stuff from today

Planning on adding a background to this when I get home from work tonight... My lack of environment/background is kind of an issue, I'd wager.

These were from my sketchbook today, I might try taking these further if I get some time. I have a bunch of stuff to try to finish before Fall semester starts again (Sharkman, Wizzard, Dome-i-cile, and one where I'm placing the Wizzard in an environment [that you haven't seen yet! Nyah, nyah nyah nyah!{There's no need to be such a clown, don't taunt our audience! - Ed.}]) and I don't want to overwhelm my feeble mind.

UPdaytt

Looking at it now, my values are inconsistent and wonky. Gotta touch that up before I add more details. And his left (our right) forearm needs some weight. Well, I'll have to work on it later.

Gotta get ready for work.

Almost Failure: Summer Goals Recap Week the Fourteenth (14th)

I almost failed this week, but I did some story-related stuff for this guy:

I want this to be amazing. I'm going to keep working this one, and the story behind it (which, come to think of it, has been on my mind for a few years).

This next guy has a big cleaver with an eagle head. An Eagle Cleaver. Pun on this.

This guy has a lighter in his shoulder. He uses it as a light source when dungeon delving, lighting molotov cocktails and long walks on the beach

A desert wanderer. He has his cloak pulled high up along his neck to keep out the sand. Like camel nostrils.

Here's a thing, want to make it cool.

He's a giant with a little village on his dome