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Posts tagged as “Artworks”

Day 144

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poesy sketch

Clémence Poésy's character from Tenet. Wow, even though I tried real hard and used construction lines, it came out just terrible compared to the original:

poesy headshot

My first thought was that I was making the jaw too long, and maybe I am, but overlaying the drawing with the construction lines made more visible, the real problem is that I got the line of the nose right, but completely gaffed the angle of the eyes (and a bit of their proportions too). There's no amount of rendering which will fix messing up the proportions this badly.

poesy comparison

Well, more practice then. Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 143

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nemesis sketch

Quick sketch of Nemesis from the cover of Wildstorm: Revelations, which is sitting around in my "inspirational pictures for Porsche the Centaur's space armor" file. No roughs, but I did discard a few failed Sharpie drawings. For comparison:

nemesis headshot

Overall, I seem to have pushed the face in a bit - both the hair outer line and the hair framing her face - and missed several degrees of tilt. But the features aren't too terrible:

nemesis comparison

Roughs definitely would have helped - if you look closely, the head's not just badly tilted, but badly tilted in relation to the shoulders, and the hair is really missing a lot of body - but I have contractors coming tomorrow, so this is all we get for today's Drawing Every Day.

-the Centaur

Day 142

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lovecraft sketch

Quick Sharpie sketch of H. P. Lovecraft, deliberately trying to focus on the shape and proportions of the head, with the sketchpad held up at a good angle on my knee. Since there are few good pictures of Lovecraft, I took this still from a Rick Roll of Lovecraft generated by deep learning:

lovecraft shocked

Comparing the proportions by matching the eyes, noes and mouth, it doesn't seem too terrible, though I have trouble really believing the size of people's ears and misjudge the chin. But the hair is off, so once again, this means I've put the facial features slightly in the wrong place:

lovecraft eyes comparison

Trying to match the hair, chin, and width of face, it appears that I'm less than a percent off in my overall head proportions, which is great; but that does confirm I am still putting facial features in the wrong place in the face, and that's a trickier problem to resolve without doing it lots and lots of times to get it right.

lovecraft chin comparison

So, practice, practice, practice: by drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 141

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starr sketch

Quick Sharpie sketch (with blue pencil roughs) of Ringo Starr. Since I was stretching faces earlier, and had hypothesized that my quick sketching habit of having the pad in the lap was a bad angle, I tried to compensate by folding a tote bag to put on my knee to lift the page, trying to approximate a 90 degree angle. Let's see how I did:

ringo starr

According to Photoshop, I missed a ~2 degree tilt to the head (or the head I drew was tilted, same difference) and the overall head was about 10% too wide - if you measure by trying to match the eyes-nose-mouth features in the drawing:

starr comparison

But there the head top and shirt collar are off. Trying to match those up doesn't work very well, but matching the top of the head and the beard, we get something more like this, where the glasses and the top of the head line up, and, sort of, the beard, but the nose and mouth are pushed downward:

Still got work to do to get the proportions right. Sigh.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 140

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pym sketch

Michael Douglas as Hank Pym from the MCU - quick Sharpie sketch after non-repro blue roughs. Man, I gotta start doing these drawings earlier in the day. Again, I stretched his head - I think because the sketchpad was in my lap and was not right-angled to my view. At least, that's what I'm guessing is going on, as I've done it on a few other drawings, but it isn't consistent, as I squashed Daniel Craig.

pym headshot

The content of the sketch isn't terrible, but it did require (a) tilt and (b) widening in order to make it even roughly line up with Mr. Douglas's face. I think I need to be more careful about making sure the page is lined up properly - not sure that's the problem, but I'll give it a try. And look for the tilt, man!

pym comparison

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 139

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cinnamon frost

Sketch - I mean, full sketch, like with roughs and rendered inks and stuff, not a 15-minute Sharpie exercise - of Cinnamon Frost. Other than forgetting her whiskers, I think this came out well. While I did use a reference image, it's not precisely the same character (Cinnamon has way more voluminous hair, almost but not quite an afro), so it's hard to judge how well it came out with regards to proportions et al: girl headscarf

Mirror reflecting it, it doesn't look too bad. Looking over it, there's a little weirdness with the exposed shoulder being too far out compared to the size of the head and the shape of the chin, but in my defense, I was focusing primarily on the hair and headscarf, and the shoulders were an afterthought in the render.

tsorf nomanniC

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 138

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sarah connor sketch

Super quick Sharpie sketch (yes, I got a new shipment of Sharpies) of Sarah Connor from Terminator: Dark Fate. What happened to her jaw, man? Wow.

sarah connor headshot

No easy way to make this one line up, even with distortion to try to make the proportions better. I can chalk part of that up to quick sketching with no roughs - once that Sharpie line is down, it's down - but there's also missing that tilt to the head, and squnching the features of the face.

sarah connor comparison

But it's late and I'm tired.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 137

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lucy scribble

I would call this a quick sketch of Scarlett Johansson from Lucy, but I am so tired I actually started fading as I was doing my quick sketch, so I quit that and did an even quicker scribble. Real drawing tomorrow.

Drawing, even if just a scribble, every day.

-the Centaur

Day 136

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alien isolation sketch

Quick Sharpie sketch of the cover of the Alien: Isolation game, run through Photoshop to create the lens flare - and, secondarily, the background greys needed to make the lens flare pop, and the green photo filter to recreate the overall look. I made the mistake of rotating the head and helmet as I drew it, but, hey, that was easily fixed in Photoshop too. Overall, it's rough and sloppy, but not too bad, though the original face shows a lot more fear, especially in the eyes and a little bit in the shape of the mouth:

alien isolation original

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 135

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loomis hands

Clasped hands from the title page of Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis. While this was from a full drawing after pencil roughs, I did simplify the rendering to use just five primary levels of value (white, black, two levels of crosshatching, plus the ink outlines of course) to make it easier on me.

The outcome: not ... terrible, but not great. I'm not going to include a scan of the original as it is inside the book, but for comparison, here's my attempt at this drawing from two and a quarter years ago:

loomis hands earlier

Admittedly, this drawing was much smaller than the new one, but the old one is still pretty sloppy. It does have a nice energy to it, and the dark outlines I use as a crutch make the old drawing pop.

Still, both of these fail to catch something about the barely visible palm of the left hand (in this picture, the left hand is on the right side of the drawing, and the palm is just barely visible at the edge of the index finger) which shows up perfectly fine in Loomis's drawing with just a few lines. This is definitely one of those times where flipping the drawing 180 makes it easier to see the true shape.

Maybe that's a sign of a really good drawing: it can look better when rotated or mirror reflected than the original. I sure have a long way to get there.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur.