Anyway, this was mostly a place with shadows, seeing how they affected perception of raised areas. I chose an alien’s face so that I wouldn’t be focused on getting it “right” and could instead focus on experimenting and seeing how things turned out. Obviously, better symmetry would improve the drawing, but this helped me to realize how even a hint of shadow or light reflection can really affect the sense of depth that a drawing has. Despite how little the helmet-like part has, it fights with the depth of the eyes. Looking at it in one place gives the sense that the eyes are recessed behind the helmet; in another place the eyes are more bug-ish, making them appear to stick out quite a bit.

I still have a lot to learn, but I had fun with this drawing and feel that it did help me with my understanding of light in drawings.

Anyway… I was sick a couple of weekends ago, so I decided that resting and doing a simple drawing would do me some good. I chose to draw a hydralisk from the StarCraft world. I had one small reference photo on my phone, but I mostly took artistic liberty and modified it as I drew it. Hydralisks are so small in the game that I didn’t feel a need to go for a perfect replica and I instead played around with harsh shadows, giving the hydralisk a more skeletal look.

The biggest problem I had with this drawing was the raised arm/claw. The perspective is definitely off, but I just couldn’t get it to look right. The face also looks a little “funky” because of the angles, but I’m overall happy with the drawing. It’s pretty different from anything else I have drawn and the skeletal look came out well.

I’m relatively pleased with the way this picture turned out. I wanted the focus to be on the mid/upper portion of the drawing, so I neglected detail in the lower third. Some of the shadows turned out a bit harsher than I intended, but they’re pretty good overall. I like the way that the hint of the ribcage turned out, but I don’t think the abs look as natural. The breasts are pretty good with the exception of the shading at the top right of the (viewer’s) left one. The collar bones turned out well, but I’m not satisfied with the way the neck looks. Oh well, there’s always next time!

Apologies for the white balance being a bit off with the photo. I took a quick shot of it and didn’t do any post processing (other than a quick resize), so it’s not as good as it should be.

My proportions are a bit off, but overall I think it looks good. I decided to add a few rough cracks to hint at why this person is no longer living, though I suppose that if everything but your skeleton has decayed, you’ve probably been dead for quite a while. Anyway, the cracks were a good chance to play with irregular shapes and their effect on lighting.

This one clearly turned out well enough that I was willing to take the time to get out my real camera instead of just snapping a quick photo with my cell phone.

As you can see, the focus here was mostly the fist and some of the forearm. I used a 5B pencil with rough, fast movement to create this. There isn’t a whole lot of detail, or really that great of contrast, but it’s a reasonable sketch as far as composition and consistent sizing (something I frequently struggle with when doing detailed drawings where I get lost focusing so much on a single section of a drawing).

Don’t worry, sketch book drawing #50 is a lot more interesting….

Anyway, This one turned out pretty well. I cut it short at the bottom to keep the focus above, though I should have done so in a more artistic way. The hands turned out relatively well, considering how difficult fine detail is with charcoal. Like any drawing, there are plenty of imperfections, but it certainly felt good to be creative again. All things considered, it’s a decent drawing considering how long it has been since the last one!

It has been a while since I did anything artistic, so I have been feeling like getting back to it the past few days. I finally did so today and spent about an hour drawing an eagle with charcoal. I used a random reference from a Google Images search, but I viewed it on my phone only, so I would just get the overall shapes from it. Of course, you can only do so much detail with charcoal anyway.

I also took snapshot of my progress every few minutes, using my Nexus One phone. Here are some scaled down versions for quick comparison:

This is the final sketch I did on the 27th (Friday). It’s also in charcoal and based on an anatomical sketch from one of my art reference books. Her face is terrible, but the rest is okay. She looks slightly wider than she should be, so her ribs look a bit off.

I also did this sketch on the 27th (Friday) with charcoal. It’s not perfect, especially her head, but it came out pretty well, and I’m definitely still in love with charcoal. This is based on an example anatomical sketch from one of my reference books.