The comics

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The experiments

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The animals

I actually did a lot of drawing during the first few weeks of my March/April holiday, but all of it was for Liv's birthday present, which was a secret until recently. That secret has been revealed, so my next few posts will give a taste of my latest output.

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Study break

I actually drew this last week, but hadn't got around to scanning it.

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Mandy Moore

A bunch of different textures to play with here, and I'm pleased with how it worked.

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Karate queen

My usual outlining, before gradually adding some detail:

I was going to finish here, but that's really nothing new:

so I decided to add in some background to make it a more complete picture:

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Lean and snarl

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Commitment

Even though I've upped my drawing patience quota, I've still been hesistant to commit to anything more than faces. But laziness like that isn't going to improve my skills, so today I've finally taken on a larger challenge. Below are 4 points on the 90 minute journey to a finished product. Luckily I'm fairly happy with how it's turned out, hopefully giving me the impetus to keep moving forward.









There is one significant error, see if you can pick it :)

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That's right, another smile

Quite clearly I'm all about the happy faces...

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Return

It had been far too long since I'd drawn anything, due to heat and/or illness, so I'm glad I've finally managed to get back to it :)

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X-Files

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I'm a water feature

Right now there are only two people in the entire world who understand this. If you're not one of them, feel free to add your own interpretation. For Em and Liv, thanks for making what could have been an awful, self-pitying Friday into an excellent friend-filled start to the Christmas break :)

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Kristin Kreuk

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Surprise

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Amy Acker

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Aishwarya Rai

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Ali Larter

Number 6 in my set of attempts to get one of my drawings to actually look like Ali Larter. I think I'm almost there...

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Katie Melua

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Alicia Silverstone

Now I wasn't absolutely sure that all the fundamental practice I'd been doing, to re-learn some key techniques for drawing (including my weakest area - patience), was going to pay off. But I could not be happier with how this turned out, and from my POV I think it now takes the mantle of my best ever picture :)

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More anime

Today's entry from my Drawspace.com exercises:

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Anime

I drew an Astroboy picture back in high school, but this is only the second anime style drawing I've done. Again, it's constructed using step-by-step instructions on Drawspace.com

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Koala

This one's mostly about symmetry and the technique of using many small curved lines to represent fur. Turned out well, I think.

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A horse walks into a bar...

This is simply an extension of the earlier exercise in identifying basic shapes and proportions, and then gradually building detail on them, including appropriate shading.

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Gremlin

If you can follow the steps to draw this face, you can probably draw every other portrait I've done, since all the framework and shading techniques I've used for earlier drawings are used right here.

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Optical illusion

Can you see the goblet? Can you see the faces? If this optical illusion is new to you I'd be stunned. However, I'd never drawn one before, and this is based on a real profile from my photo reference collection. It's surprisingly hard to get even as close to a proper reflection as I managed!

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Deer

One early exercise in seeing shapes and using these to build more complex sketches had me drawing from a duck-shaped candle (not shown here), and then prompting the search for another picture to try the technique on. Here's the result, which I'm happy with, evidence of more patience than usual, and a willingness to get the proportions right before rushing into any detail.

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Starting again

Dissatisfaction with these rough sketches, and a feeling that my drawing had plateaued, has prompted me to return back to basics with my drawing, so the next several posts are the results of exercises from Drawspace.com. If you're at all interested in learning to draw, that's a pretty good place to start, and even going through the basics has reminded me of plenty I'd forgotten since my last art class 18 years ago.

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Smile

Face

Bite

Smile

One morning drawing, and now I'm off to watch the final 4 episodes ever of Veronica Mars...

Face

I'd gone a whole day without drawing a face, so thought I'd close out with this. Unfortunately it doesn't capture the subtle amusement of the original, which was the reason I chose to try it in the first place.

Poses

More attempts at getting proportions right, in some line drawings with negligible shading. Since I drew these at A5 scale, any faces I drew didn't work, so I left just the guidelines.

Carillon

This didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped. Although it should at least be recognisable, I didn't get the dimensions right before I started filling in detail, and then got wedded to it, rather than starting again from scratch.