Creative

Ancient art, modern fun

When I look back at the art I did as a kid, I’ll sometimes draw (ho ho) inspiration from it, thinking, “That was pretty good.” As I developed my mad sketching skills, I did a copious amount of copying, which is a pretty good way to learn how to draw.

Speaking of copying (such a clever segue), here’s a sketch I did based on the Newsweek cover story from June 18, 1979, “Hollywood’s scary summer”:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yhWRyPJ9G54/UIyuDVMQbzI/AAAAAAAACa4/KSVozUl6h9s/s1600/Newsweek-Alien.jpeg

The story cataloged the horror movies of summer 1979, with Alien featuring prominently, and an included shot of the alien (which was a spoiler at the time, I suppose) formed the basis of my sketch, done on a 5×7″ sketchpad using a 2B pencil:

I pulled this sketch into Affinity Photo and played around with the exposure, brightness and a few other settings. The end result is an interesting example of how you can change the feel of a drawing without actually altering the drawing itself (ie. no erasing, drawing over existing lines or adding new elements).

The modified version pops more, and I like the more dramatic look to the glowing mist. I think the 14-year-old version of me would have approved. The not-14 year old version of me is still not crazy about how the ribs look.

To Inktober or not Inktober

Inktober 2021 starts mere hours from now, 31 days of prompts that are meant to be done in ink or ink-like media. I have participated the last two years, but strangely am still uncertain whether I want to take part again this year.

Part of my ambivalence is the first few prompts are rather uninspiring to me. Another part is feeling I should be devoting more time to structured learning on my drawing instead of doing a bunch of goofy prompts, which can help, but are maybe a better way to “cut loose” than to hone my skills.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow!

Here’s the list for 2021:

Yes, I have stopped drawing

I didn’t plan on stopping and I’ll be blunt: Going back to work is a big part of why I stopped. Not because it took away time to draw (because I can always find the time, and have in the past) but just being back in a joyless job sucked the drive out of me. Not just for drawing, either, but for writing–even just posting silly things to this blog. My creativity has been replaced by playing so much Diablo 3 that my right wrist hurts. My level 70 wizard is totes powerful, though (his name is Spellsworth).

When I haven’t been playing Diablo 3, I would find myself sitting and staring at the screen. Then go to bed. I mean at night, not at one in the afternoon or something. I still have some standards.

But another part of my drawing ennui was the general direction of the Making Art Everyday prompts. A month of plants was not great. Really, it got kind of boring by the end, and then it was followed by other stuff I was even less interested in. I mean, Week 20 is making patterns. I don’t want to spend a week drawing patterns. I’m not even sure I want to spend a day drawing patterns. Running with a theme for an entire month is maybe not the best way to do the prompts. Or more accurately, it’s not the best way for me. I prefer Inktober’s approach of doing something different every time, often with the prompt not being a thing (like as plant), but a mood or expression or something else (to be fair, Making Art Everyday did have some of these for the month-long People Skills prompts). But I realize that the MAE prompts are as much meant to be tutorials and that doing so through themes might make sense there. Maybe it’s just not for me.

Anyway, I still haven’t decided what to do yet. I might return to MAE, I might try the weekly Inktober prompts, I might try coming up with my own prompts. I don’t know.

I’m playing less Diablo 3, though. My right wrist is thanking me.

Daily Drawing 101: Hibiscus

At this point the daily part should be in quotes, because I am way behind.

I did three sketches of a hibiscus flower before finally looking for a very simple cartoon reference. The result is okay, but better than the proverbial kick in the pants.

I am pretty tired of work and I am pretty tired of drawing flowers. I’m beginning to think doing an entire month of a theme for prompts is maybe not the best idea. At least not for plants. 😛

Anyway, with lousy weather in the forecast I may have some time to catch up. We’ll see.

#makingarteveryday