Ballerinas (ballerinae? Ballerinuses?) ... ballet dancers *firm nod*

For some reason, I've been sketching ballerinas all day. And on a whim, I took one of these to a watercolor finish.





Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd sketched it, inked it, painted it, and inked it again (note to self: watercolor and gouache layered over ink is a bad idea) that I thought, hey you know what would've made for a better pose? Almost anything else. /=\

Well. Lesson learned.

On the left are some quick studies for a more dynamic pose, along with (for some reason) a colored shoulder/bicep study.




Cristian.

Portrait practice

I've never been great with portraits; drawing people, whether it's cartoony or semi-real, presents its own challenges each time, but is easy by comparison.

That said, I'm pretty thrilled with how this came out. Even working from a photograph (which is considerably easier than working from a live model, since you can take as long as you want without the subject moving or getting bored), this went wrong from the beginning. But I managed to pull it around, and came out with something I'm pretty happy with.




A couple of in-progress shots.... I keep meaning to take more of these, but it always slips my mind until I'm nearly done. =/







Also, my niece, Odelia. "Leah" for short... or so I keep trying to convince her parents. =P








That's it for now, but I've been doing a lot of drawing lately (if not necessarily a lot of posting*), so there will be more updates soon.

*-- to make up for sparse posting, here's some cute piglets with wings. Enjoy.

Sketchbook Dump

School's keeping me nice and busy, but I have nothing but time on the bus. Here's couple of things I"ve done this week:


You don't see many dogs on the bus, but when I do, I like to try and sketch them. Animals aren't my strong suit, but they're still a lot of fun.

This one would not STOP MOVING, but I did my best.

I think the one in the middle's my favorite.



Old people usually sit really still, and so make perfect subjects.



This one was interesting to do. I started with the rightmost figure, and decided on a whim to keep going to the left. Similarly on a whim, I decided to see if I couldn't indicate distance with nothing but ink wash (after I'd done the man in the middle, which is why I think he competes for attention with the subject on the right). It was an interesting exercise; one I should try again a little more purposefully.




That's all for now, but I'll upload some school stuff later in the week, I think.


Until then.

-- Cristian

Golem

The final turnaround of yesterday's golem. Pretty happy with it in general, but aware of a few problem areas. =/





As always, critiques are welcome.

-- Cristian

UPDATE--

The drawing didn't print like I thought it would. Something was lost in translation, I guess, so I took the time on the bus to try and enhance it a bit. Not hugely different, but I thought I'd post it here for comparison.

Works in Progress

I'm designing a golem for a character designing class; not the spindly little bi-polar cave dweller we know and love, but the clay monster of Jewish folklore.

I didn't know where to go beyond "mobile lump of clay", so I shotgunned it, drawing things as they occurred to me.


I decided pretty quickly I didn't want him cute, so I went for big, hulking menace.


I briefly toyed with the idea of making him four-legged and animalistic, but that goes against the preset "slow, lumbering, and dumb" parameters. Save those for something else, I guess.




I drew this spiky guy a few hours into the project, and I like him. Huge, menacing, intimidating. You'd run from this guy if you saw him coming at you.



I kept playing with other stuff, but kept coming back to this.

Next, I'm going to work on a little individuality for it (misshaped forms, cracks, missing pieces, etc; it's made of clay, after all), then the turnaround, and that should be that.

Those'll be up tomorrow, I think.


-- Cristian

Oct-18-2010

I feel like I should do a whole thing about who I am and what I do, but the most pertinent things about me are in the profile. To wit: I draw stuff, and some of the stuff I draw, I'll be posting here.

I'll start with something I drew today (and which ended up being the header for this blog, until I find or make something better). I bought a new sketchbook today, a Pentalic "Nature Sketch" series sketchbook. Good for sketching, but thick enough to take (reasonable) amounts of water without too much warping. This is ideal, because I wanted to start doing more drawing on location, beyond just the pen-and-pencil stuff I do all the time.

The cover says it takes "pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, acrylics, pastels and watercolor", and I intend to put that to the test.

To put the paper through its paces, I tried an ink-wash pen I had on me, and this is the result of that:

...

And it's all I have for immediate use, but I have a few sketchbooks I'll be scanning for future updates, as well as what I produce on a daily basis (either for school, or just for fun.)



-- Cristian