Daily Drawing No. 41: Otter

I am dissatisfied with my otter. The head is not bad (except for the ear–I draw ears like Liefeld draws feet), but the general look of the fur and the forelegs is just blah. I used reference and I think I would have been better off to go my own creative way on those aspects.

Or I could have cropped it to just the neck and head.

But it is recognizably an otter, so it otter do.

P.S. The grass looked OK to me until I actually sat back and really looked at it. Now I think it’s weird, too. I used the same Combed brush from the Fur and Fluff brush set for it that I did for the otter itself.

If I ever go back to redo any of these (which is admittedly unlikely), this will probably be one of them.

#makingarteveryday

Treadmill walk: Long time no walk (on treadmill)

Although I didn’t know exactly what affliction I had back in July of Plague Year One (2020), I knew something was up when my left foot started to hurt for seemingly no reason. Slowly, it improved and I began running again, then in December the soreness came back, but significantly worse. I actually didn’t even walk (for exercise) for awhile, which leads to today…

My doctor diagnosed me with plantar fasciitis and this seems like a gimme, as my symptoms matched exactly. I began doing some stretching exercises and just recently began walking for exercise again. Today I decided to do a treadmill workout for the first time since October 25–yes, almost four months ago.

The results were…not bad! I was a bit slow, as expected, but I also deliberately set the pace lower, keeping it at 6:00/km for the first 18 minutes or so and nudging it up to 6:20/km for the last 12 minutes.

The exercise went like this:

  • Starting out and feels OK
  • Left foot feels a tiny bit sore–will it get worse?
  • Starting to actually sweat, like this is real exercise
  • Picking up the pace, in the zone, everything else forgotten

Stats (previous walk in brackets, based on 6.5 speed). The standout one is probably how much higher the BPM, vividly illustrating how out of shape I am (well, I’m in some kind of shape, that shape happens to be mostly round):

Pace: 10:47/km (9:29 km/h)
Time: 30:33 (30:04)
Distance: 2.83 km (3.17 km)
Calories burned: 301 (280)
BPM: 146 (133)

Daily Drawing No. 40: Sloth

This was done following along a lesson by Lisa Bardot on the Skillshare site (no link because it’s paid–I’m on a 14 day free trial for this particular prompt). The free Fur and Fluff brush set for Procreate makes the fur way easier to do. The other bits needed more work, but I’m trying to keep a lid on how long I spend on these prompts.

#makingarteveryday

Daily Drawing No. 39: Fox

What does the fox say? Start over, that’s what. 😛

My first attempt, using Bardot Brush’s free Fur and Fluffy brush set for Procreate, ended with something that looked like a mutant fox you might find in a Fallout game. Having used reference for this, I next chose to just do a fox head without reference and while I’m not pleased with the face, it’s definitely better than the first try, so yay for that.

#makingarteveryday

A few photos from Terra Nova

Yesterday Nic and I went to Terra Nova in Richmond to take pictures of birbs. Here is the experience in list form:

  • It was relatively mild, temperature-wise, at 9C, but the wind was whipping full force, and it made it feel like about -30C or something. My hands would turn freezing after taking just a few pictures.
  • I did not take a lot of pictures
  • The photos I did take of birds were nearly 100% out of focus. sometimes the branches the bird was sitting in would be in focus, sometimes nothing would be. This was kind of annoying.
  • I got a few decent scenery images, which can be seen below
Taken with Canon EOS M50
Taken with iPhone 12