Quick Sharpie sketches of the Star Trek: The Original Series cast.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Posts tagged as “Artworks”
Quick Sharpie sketches of the Doctors. Some came out better than others, but it gave me practice drawing 13 faces quickly, without the luxury of obsessing over each one.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
... came up as my wife and I were discussing the "creative hangers-on form" of Stigler's Law. The original Stigler's Law, discovered by Roger Merton and popularized by Stephen Stigler, is the idea that in science, no discovery is named after its original discoverer.
In creative circles, it comes up when someone who had little or nothing to do with a creative process takes credit for it. A few of my wife's friends were like this, dropping by to visit her while she was in the middle of a creative project, describing out loud what she was doing, then claiming, "I told her to do that."
In the words of Finn from The Rise of Skywalker: "You did not!"
In computing circles, the old joke referred to the Java programming language. I've heard several variants, but the distilled version is "He thinks he invented Java because he was in the room when someone made coffee." Apparently this is a good description of how Java itself was named, down to at least one person claiming they came up with the name Java and others disputing that, even suggesting that they opposed it, claiming instead that someone else in the room was responsible - while that person in turn rejected the idea, noting only that there was some coffee in the room from Peet's.
Regardless, I dispute Howard Aiken's saying "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." Nah. Once you've forced an idea down someone's throat, they won't just swallow it, they'll claim it was in their stomach all along.
-the Centaur
Another rushed day, another quick sketch from memory fail. Despite having drawn Capaldi like 4 times in a row, when I try drawing without reference it just doesn't look like him. The above is day 161; below is day 162, when I decided to focus on just eyes. Again, I'm doing quick Sharpie sketches to force me to focus on shapes and proportions, where my biggest flaws are, rather than fine details of rendering.
I swear, this has nothing to do with what's going on at Kill 6 Billion Demons right now:
Oh, if you're not reading K6BD, you should.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Now that's better. Tilting the page, pencil roughs, and measurements of the face were critical here to getting the drawing better - though, even with careful roughs, I did that weird thing where one part of the face lines up and the other doesn't, causing a dent on the right side of the page when compared to the original below:
Still, it doesn't line up too terrible:
I see a couple of places that need work, particularly my measurement of jawlines. Or, looking more closely, picking which line to emphasize in the jawline.
On to another subject tomorrow ...
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Wow, this quick Sharpie sketch of Peter Capaldi from memory was a complete fail. I was trying to save time so I can crash early, but the Twelfth Doctor here ended up looking like a bad extra from Aeon Flux. Comparing to yesterday's reference shot (which I did not use, but nevermind) you can't make them line up, but if you try, the features need to be squashed about 80%, the hair about 90%, and the neck, well, the neck is a caricature and is not fixable by any amount of warping:
Oh well. Back to reference drawing (or leaving myself more time).
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Now that's Peter Capaldi. Pencil roughs with Pilot V5 and Sharpie outlines (and erased with a Pentel Clic Eraser, not a 25 year old pieces of Bellcore swag). Let's see how I did:
Not completely terrible, and it even mostly lines up:
Much better than my first attempt, where that Bellcore eraser did me wrong:
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Halfway into the roughs of a drawing of the Twelfth Doctor, I had a terrible eraser accident. I'd grabbed a random pencil out of a jar and, while the graphite was good, apparently the eraser had gone bad, leaving a horrible splotch of pink-orange across my page. The pencil is labeled "Bellcore" which, based on either my own personal history of when I might have acquired it OR when Bellcore ceased to exist by that name, means it's around twenty-five years old. Apparently the erasers in #2 pencils that are really old can dry out, causing the problems that I had tonight. Oh well.
Still drawing every day, maybe just not always erasing.
-the Centaur
A couple quick ink sketches (Pilot V5, no roughs) because I'm on vacation, damnit. Above, Day 155, a quick sketch from memory of my earlier drawing of Neil from Tenet. I wonder how well I did - probably, poorly - but I'm not going to concern myself with comparisons today, I want to crash early.
Below, Day 156, a sketch of Jeremiah from the picture of her on my convention backdrop (same drawing from the Jeremiah Willstone frontispiece and website). No roughs again, which made it tricky, but even though this drawing is sloppier than the original, I see things that I've learned from the Drawing Every Day exercise that could help me improve these kinds of drawings in the future.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Super quick Sharpie sketch of Alphonse Mucha's Spring, no roughs at all, with my wife watching over my shoulder while I quizzed her about titles for a new Jeremiah Willstone novel (we settled on the provisional title JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE FLOATING GARDENS OF VENUS).
As for the drawing, the individual parts came out OK, but I gaffed the relative alignment of the falling hair and eye on the left side of the face (on the right side of the drawing) and the whole thing ended up lopsided compared to the original:
There is no way to make that hair or jaw line up right, but the face itself isn't terrible:
Well, back at it. Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
As it says on the tin. Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur
P. S. Shadow in the Cloud lived up to the hype - my wife and I watched it tonight.
As it says on the tin: my wife and I went for a long walk, which we normally do at the very end of the day just before I hit the hay - and then I realized I hadn't done my drawing. So you get a quick sketch.
Drawing every day continues, hopefully with more rendering, tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Quick sketch of a model from a sale on the Dell website (which I can no longer find). Roughs in pencil, sketched with a Pilot V5, no rendering to speak of. Let's see how I did:
Not entirely terrible, and I'm getting better at overall proportions in the face, but I am consistently tilting faces - this time roughly 3-4 degrees - and the further I get from the face the worse the proportions are. There's no way to line up the hat and the face simultaneously due to the tilt, and I completely lost the script on the arm angles, though the outlines of the arms aren't entirely terrible.
Reflecting on the past, seems like the angle of the page is less important for the squashing phenomenon than just paying attention to distances, as this was a sketchbook-in-the-lap drawing, and by consciously looking at the sizes of things (and using construction lines) I kept it together.
Welp, more work to do on the broader landscape - and that dang tilt.
And with this, my posts have caught up with my drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Yesterday's sketch (pencil roughs and rendering and all) of Brad Pitt from Moneyball. I dunno, to me this looks more like some other actor auditioning for the Joker. "Do you want to know how I got these scars?" Let's see how I did (this isn't the precise shot I drew this from - I was flying, and sketching off a frozen screenshot of Moneyball - but it is close) compared to the original Billy Beane:
I still don't like the drawing, but the proportions aren't too bad. I was about 7 degrees off on the tilt of the head, but the relative positions of the features and hair and even shoulders - everything except the shirt collar - more or less line up with the face. The real problem is I crushed his right cheek (the left side of the picture) which apparently destroys the "bradness" of his face. Also, the eyes are bit off - he was very squinty in the screen still I used, hard for me to render in the near-dark of the plane.
Well, getting caught up. One more drawing to upload after this.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
Quick Sharpie sketch of another scene from Shadow in the Cloud. I have to turn in early, so this was quick as can be, but I put special focus on trying to get the proportions right and paying attention, if not to the angle of the sketchpad per se, the distances between pieces. Let's see how I did:
As usual, I missed a couple of degrees of tilt, but I really only had to scale this, not squash it. The mouth was too narrow, the nose too low, and the hair too narrow, but otherwise, not too off the mark. I tried squashing it to make sure, but no, this is about as good as it gets. Construction lines I think would really help with the nose and mouth, as it's hard to get the proportions right on the first try; the width of the hair and the scarf would have been salvageable if I'd kept up the feature size comparison I'd done on the cheek (roughly, her head height is about five foreheads, and facial features are three forehead heights wide; but the hair extends far more than I measured, as does the scarf).
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Welp, another failure - and I did this quick Sharpie sketch twice, with the sketchpad held on my knee supported by a bag to try to get that 90 degree angle. But even the second try failed to match the face well (admittedly, Chloë Grace Moretz is screaming her head off here, because a gremlin is trying to take her head off here, all while Japanese planes are shooting at her and her fellow airmen are hitting on her like, all at the same time and stuff, no pressure or nothing):
Looking at this, if you squeeze it say 5% vertically, some features line up better, but the hairline and jawline are actually worse, so I'm showing below one that is not scaled. I think the real problem is that I simply am not accurately seeing what is there, and need to pay closer attention to angles and lines (or at least, the way I recreate distances as I draw the lines I think that I have seen):
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Well, this was a fail. Quick Sharpie sketch of Chloë Grace Moretz from Shadow in the Cloud. Again, the sketchpad on the knee, again the protractor - but I skipped the extra bag, as I'd raised the pad to the right angle by sitting differently. Well, either I settled shortly thereafter, or I'm doing something else wrong, because I stretched her head compared to the original:
As usual, there's a 2-3 degree tilt I'm missing, but more importantly, the head I drew had to be shrunk vertically by about 15% in order to make it line up (and even then, there are other problems). I think construction lines will help, which I will return to in a few days if I cannot correct this stretching problem through the tilt of the canvas.
Welp, back to the drawing board.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Quick Sharpie sketch of Elizabeth Debicki as Kat from Tenet. Yes, rendering with a Sharpie is kinda crummy, but for this exercise I was specifically focusing on page angle (using a protractor and a small folded bag to raise the sketchpad to 90 degrees to my eye while sitting on my knee), head tilt, eye tilt, overall landscape proportions, and making sure the eye closest to the edge of the face was close to the edge of the face. Let's see how I did:
Wow, I forgot how beaten down Kat looked in this scene. :-( Overall, I don't think the sketch came out too bad. I missed a roughly two degree tilt to the scene, and the eyes are still not perfect (more clear if you match the cheek rather than matching eye-nose-mouth) but the hypothesis that the root cause of my stretched / squashed heads was drawing on a poorly angled page seems preliminarily confirmed:
Perhaps I'll try a few more of these, focusing on the angle of the page, and if I can keep getting the proportions right, maybe we can go back to trying to do actual renders.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Quick Sharpie sketch of Robert Pattinson in one of his pre-James Bond film roles, playing the mysterious benefactor Bruce Wayne who assists the Protagonist of Christopher Nolan's Tenet. While I got the head tilt and eye line all right this time, overall I'd rate this sketch as a firm "meh" compared to the original:
Doing a comparison just based on scaling, the eyes, mouth and cheek look OK, though the nose line is way off and the head is too narrow. That's a clue, so let's try this with a relative squeeze of about 15%:
While the nose line is still off, the whole thing lines up much better. This is really starting to make me suspect that I'm not tilting the page right when I draw with the sketchbook in my lap. To test that theory, I calculated ~15% corresponds to an angle of roughly ~30 degrees (at least, according to the arccos function) and measured the angle to the page with a protractor held right angles to the page and a ruler lined up between it and my eye. This measured out roughly ~20 degrees, which is close enough that it makes me think the page tilt from drawing in my lap is a serious suspect for the culprit.
Next, fixing that. Somehow.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur