makingarteveryday

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.

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I’m still not sure about the nose, but this probably turned out better than expected, even if it’s still not great. At least it looks like a gorilla!

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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.

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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.

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This was supposed to be a combined sketch/final piece day but I’m makin’ my own rules now so all you get is the sketch.

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Today was supposed to be the finished version of my zebra sketch, but I didn’t feel like doing it, so instead I drew a Gum Gum Person dressed as a zebra.

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I’m renaming these posts to something that flows a little better. I’ll rename the previous 34…soonish.

Today is a zebra sketch. Zebras have more stripes than you might think.

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The finished penguin, still on a featureless ice floe.

The feet are kind of Liefeld-ish. I could have done better.

The water was made, appropriately, using a watercolor brush.

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A penguin on an ice floe, thinking of fish.

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Here’s my finished bear sketch, which I don’t care for. The color is weird because I didn’t use reference, so I just winged it and the grass is odd because I was experimenting with shadows/textures. Also, the bear is magically standing on top of the grass instead of in it. I probably should have fixed that, but it was getting late.

I also wasn’t sure how to shade the bear, so it is mostly flat, but with some texture. Kind of a mess. But I did it!

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I’m not sure how many of these I’ll do. The Making Art Everyday prompts for February are animals, which is fine. I’ll draw a penguin. But the parameters have shifted from just doing something every day to something more tutorial-like, which is not what I want. I am not making these sketches to learn, per se, I’m doing them to build a habit for drawing every day. Any learning that may happen alongside them is incidental–I plan on continuing my actual learning in structured lessons elsewhere.

Here’s how this week’s prompts work:

This week is all about teaching yourself how to draw something from memory. The idea here is to study an animal, identify its unique characteristics, break it down into simple shapes, then develop your own method for drawing that animal. It’s a process that can take time, so I’ve split each prompt across two days.

This is WAY too specific for a daily prompt and splitting it over two days makes it…not daily.

So I cheated and did a bear sketch from reference. It turned out decent.

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I went with a hot dog because I wanted to draw a hot dog, but it looks strange and I’m not sure I’d want to eat it.

I also forgot to put on the toppings.

But I got some experience using the smudge tool and various brushes to create blends.

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