Again this took too long to do for my liking. From the next couple of weeks instead of doing the entire figure I'll alternate upper body then lower body. More Sunstone copies.

uhg this guy did this painting while narrating what he was doing and while he was sick AND in just under an hour. This took me three hours to do. Hopefully with sufficient practice I'll get to his level someday.

 So four figures seems to work better taking about an hour. And Sunstone copies. I feel the need to point out here that Sunstone started out as a bunch of BDSM pin ups. I decided to copy this rather than Sejic's Witchblade stuff because of the looser line work and the more simplified and expressive style.

Speaking of Stjepan Sejic here is something I copied from him. He posted a video of him doing this tutorial so I decided to follow along. This is about halfway done, next half tomorrow.

So six figures took a little longer than hour so I don't think I'll be doing it this way. Also Sunstone copies, a nice bit of body language here. 

Another Cntrl+paint exercise this time focusing on crosshatching.

Six poses seems to take a little to long. Also Sunstone copies. 

Another Cntrl+Paint study using stuff from around my house.

Longer studies. Trying to get some thing that I can do in 45 minutes or an hour so I can fit it into my schedule, this took way to long so I'm going to have to do something different. Ally and Lisa meet in the Sunstone comic copies. 

There's a website that is called theartclasses.com and the author does some great tutorial videos so I decided to work them into my practice schedule. This is the first part of Female Facial Construction.

 So now I'm going to try and do some longer poses. I'm trying to get better at drawing people from different angles and visualizing people in unusual poses. Also Sunstone copies.

Stjepan Sejic copy. I think this is from the comic Aphrodite IX. My focus was on the arms this times.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies

I'm doing some Cntrl + Paint exercises just to kind brush up on some of the fundamentals. This is a bunch contour drawings done from stuff around my apartment.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies.

A copy of a drawing by Stjepan Sejic. This took me a little over an hour, I'm trying to figure out how he does what he does.

 So I was out of town and decided to take my laptop. It's kind of old so this didn't work so well so I switched to my sketchbook.

Some comic pages and doodles.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies.

Some poses and faces.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. Facial expressions.

A pose, Wolverine and then a bunch a stuff from Harry Potter. I've been listening to the audio books, the guy who does the naration does a good job of giving every character a distinct voice.  

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. The facial expressions are awesome in the comic and I'm hopeing to glean how he does it by doing these copies.

Evil Hag take 2. While still a little lacking and not really hag like I think that this an improvement over the one yesterday.

 Gestures and Sunstone Copies. While there relationship isn't the main focus it's always fun to watch as one of them will face palm at least once.

Evil hag. I don't like this much, it just lacks any kind of pop.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. Only coffee can make Alan forgive Ally.

Eska from The Legend of Korra cartoon. She is my favorite character from the new season. So cold and demanding. I'm hoping that Bolin's rejection will show her that being manipulative and mean isn't the way to make friends, at least sooner that Azula from The Last Airbender.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. I love Alan's hair in this part.

1940's women's fashion. I'm sure this was for something but I can't remember for what.

 Gestures and Sunstone Copies.

Some poses trying to get across the feeling of exhaustion.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. I love this guys style, he has a very Image and Top Cow style but with more expression than usually associated with that style.

Some random guy, a dragon, Asami and a drawing of me and Korra.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies.

Maeve from the Dresden files. I pictured her with a mohawk but also did one with the dreadlocks like shes described in her first appearance.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. This is the prologue and parts of the beginning.

Nightshade and Enchantress as re imagined by me. Nightshade's magic I wanted to look liquid and kind of gloopy for lack of a better word. I pictured Enchantress's magic looking like something out of Tron, lots of geometric shapes. I designed there tattoos to match there powers Nightshade's are blocky and simple, Enchantress's are ornate and delicate.

 Gestures and Sunstone copies. Another reason I decided to do copies of Sunstone is because I suck at drawing two characters interacting and Sunstone being a comic about two people and there relationship it seemed like a good fit.

A sequence from the book White Night by Jim Butcher. I love the Dresden Files series and have been listening to the audio books so I ended up with a few sketches of stuff from the books. This sequence is from near the beginning of the book and Harry is proving to his apprentice Molly that she isn't ready to go with him into combat. I think the sequence would have been better if I had done it from the profile and I don't like how Harry's face turned out. I think I was having an off day when I did that.

 Gestures and NEW COPIES! Now I'm going to copy the webcomic Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic. He does some really great facial expressions and body language in the comic and I'm hoping to learn that stuff along with some storytelling stuff.

A redesign of Shadowpact one of my favorite super hero teams. Blue devil and Detective chimp I wanted to look more blue collar. Enchantress and Nightshade I wanted to look like twins and have magical powers but very different personalities. I pictured Nightshade having a more boisterous personality and being a bit of a magical heavy weight, lots of power with little patience for the finer details. Enchantress being the opposite, analytic and distant. Her powers work better on subtle magics and enchanting objects. While it would be difficult to get them to work together when they did they could do some AMAZING stuff.

 Gestures and the last of the Vilppu copies. Whoooo. I think that I learned a bunch but I'm ready to move on to something else.

Just some poses. Some from life some from my head.

 Gestures and Vilppu copies. Only a couple more of these.

Some sketches of Thunder, a superhero and one of my favorite's. Shes the daughter of Black Lightning and she decided to become a super hero against his wishes. I though she had a good character arc in the Outsiders, going from a kind of naive character to a more pragmatic character but still optimistic.

 Gestures and Vilppu copies. Only three days left.

Posting some sketch book pages. My scanner is having some issues so I had to take pictures with my camera. A couple of figures and a interesting looking woman I saw on the bus.

 Gestures and Vilppu copies. I decided to do some of the work in grey tones because it would have taken forever to do using my drawing brush.

Power Girl in Mass Effect inspired armor. Done for the one year anniversary of this blog. Well one year of posting every day actually but still pretty cool. I hope my two followers will allow me to reflect a bit on the last year or so.

When I started this blog it was to give me some thing to do while I searched for a job, any job. I remember feeling very satisfied with my self at the end of the first month and deciding I would keep this blog updated daily as long as I could. I eventually got a job but not an art job as I had wanted, I got and still have a job in a pizza kitchen.  So now I toil away working my days in a kitchen and spending my nights working on improving my art skills. There are times where it feels very isolating and frustrating. People I know are living lives, having fun and other artists seem light years ahead of me in both talent and output. More than once it has been suggested that I should give this up, that it's not in the cards for me. But I can't. Putting words to why I can't is difficult. There are days that go by and it feels like I'll explode if I don't draw or paint.

On a more optimistic note, I'm getting better. It's a slow process most of the time, but the progress is there. I still have plenty to work on, perspective and foreshortening are the two big things that I'm seeing now. But even they have improved. I came into this art thing later in life than most artists but I'll be damned if that's going to stop me. If there are any doubts about my improvement go look at my June posts for last year of Power Girl and compare it to this. I think that the improvement is significant and if that improvement continues who knows where I'll be in a year or two.

I feel like I should leave it at that for now and get back to making art.