drawing trouble

Flame mail: A drawing

This started as another quick “spooky dark figure” sketch, but I ended up being dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of it, so this is not a quick sketch, it’s about ten different quick sketches all layered on top of each other until I figured I was ready to move on, which I probably should have done about eight layers earlier.

Enjoy!

This was done on my iPad Pro with Procreate. The ground appears much darker on my computer monitors than it does on the iPad. I’m inclined to think the iPad version is closer to correct, so I’m not going to tinker with it again.

Probably.

Night probe redux

I tried fixing the trees in this drawing, then just removed them and swapped in an ocean, along with a cloudy-looking sky instead of a star-filled one.

I’m not sure that this is better so much as different. But I like messing around with the different elements.

I’ll, uh, draw other stuff, too, rather than iterate on this one forever. I swear!

Earlier versions here.

Drawing: Night probe

This is riffing on Chris Silverman’s work, which you can see here: notes.art

I tried to decide if the probe thingie should be drifting over:

  • Mountains
  • Trees
  • Water
  • Urban scenery

I went with my original pick (trees), but I struggled to get the trees looking like they fit the rest of the drawing. I also futzed with the probe a lot. Overall, I think it’s not bad. If I keep doing these, my own style will eventually emerge. Probably with Gum Gum People.

For reference, the brushes I used in Procreate were:

  • Artistic Crayon (mainly the probe)
  • 6B pencil (mostly for the highlights)
  • Dry Ink (fill)
  • Technical pen (fill, some outlines)

Bonus! Here’s a second version, with tweaks to the moon and with the starry backdrop greatly simplified. I think the ideal might be a cross between the two, but I’ll probably leave this for now and move onto something else.

Inktober 2024, yay or nay? Or neigh?

HORSE is not one of the prompts, but for the sake of my headline, pretend it is.

As I pondered whether to take part in Inktober 2024, I looked over the list of prompts (they reveal them all in advance now) and whoever came up with the list really likes exploring/camping and the like, because almost the entire list fits these themes. It’s actually easier to list the prompts that don’t fit:

  • Grungy (though an argument could be made for it)
  • Scarecrow
  • Jumbo
  • Violin

Here’s the full list:

Looking over the official blog, the list was unveiled on August 26 with no additional description or anything, but ain’t no way words like expedition, hike, roam, trek, uncharted and backpack are a coincidence. A lot of these words would even inspire the same sketches, which is kind of weird. Maybe the idea is to inspire some “outside the box” thinking by including so many similarly themed words.

In any case, the first prompt, BACKPACK, is not inspiring me, so I probably won’t bother this year. But that’s OK–I’m still drawing! In fact, I’ll post something later today.

Bird art: Brown creeper

Based on a photo I took at Burnaby Lake this summer.

This is the first time the background1I’m still not sure I’m entirely happy with it, either, but it’s pretty close. I may tweak it, I may not. took longer to do than the actual bird. Much longer!