I have officially moved on to the next stage of my freelance project. I sent off sketches to my client and will be making some additional sketches today. I haven't heard back yet, but hopefully I'm at least going SOMEWHAT in the right direction.
I've been doing warm-up drawings every day at work and some days when I'm home, and I have been liking what I've been getting, by and large.
I keep waiting for what I'm learning doing studies every day to show up in my personal art.
Okay, that is partially an exaggeration...I can see improvements. There are areas in which I can tell I'm learning -- my ability to draw hands is getting better, for one. I'm just at a deeply frustrated place with my personal art this week. Nothing is as good as I want it to be. My brain knows what it wants to do but my skills don't obey.
Also, just due to being full of freelance, most of my personal projects have been of the 'quick little doodle' variety...I haven't had time to spend on anything big that OTHER people get to see in a while. My deviant art gallery is looking sparse. I love the project I'm working on, don't get me wrong. I just...wish I didn't have to sleep. Or interact with other people. If my brain didn't INSIST on occasionally interacting with other people in order to stave off madness, I would have more time to work, and the time I was alone for a whole weekend would be more productive, and after a day and a half or so I wouldn't reach the point where I was lethargic, zoned out and twitchy.
I just want to be really good at art NOW and have magical beauty drop from my fingertips and leave all viewers in awe. Is that REALLY too much to ask? *sigh* Of course, it always heartens me a little when artists that wow and stun me complain of the same problems. I hear that where one's hands are (skill-wise) is perpetually about 5 years behind where your brain is? And I know I'm better now than I was even a year ago. Progress is just so...time consuming. And if i could just draw ALL THE TIME I'd get better faster.
But I can't because the world and jobs and journeys exist.
That was my smooth segue into mentioning that in a couple weeks, I'm flying back to California for a friends' wedding, and as I'm not in school and have a job that I will have officially been at for one whole year this coming week, I have proper vacation time, and rather than flying out for a hurried and exhausting weekend, I'm staying an entire week. I've been saving up audio files of Cabin Pressure to listen to on my trip, so Benedict Cumberbatch's voice and British humor can soothe me as the joys of flying coach surround me. I should pick up some better headphones....
So, I obviously can't show you any of my freelance work yet, but I can share some of my favorite warm-up drawings and also, some of my personal art, about which I have mixed feelings.
So, for the past 2 weeks, I've been adopting themes...stuff that either intrigues me or that I specifically want to improve on...or at least that's the plan, as it's only been two weeks so far.
Week before last was headphones. Because I like people wearing headphones.
Last week was hot and humid, so I decided to do languid summer images, and started with a girl with a surfboard, using kind of simple and stylized line work and color, rather than detailed rendering, to capture the shape of her body and the shadows on it, rather than trying to shade in every detail. Then my coworker decided to find me two more photos for the next two days...perhaps I should have her find me photos more often, as I really rather like both of those she contributed:
(If you would like to see larger versions of any of these images, I have them all in a folder in my Deviant Art gallery)
Other stuff I've done in my free time, with which I am sometimes happy and sometimes not, is pretty much silly fan art right now. I did one large piece, experimenting with style--shading, lighting, crosshatching and frameless sequential art, that was another bit born of my Sherlock obsession. Sometimes I like this and sometimes I hate it and there are aspects that I love and others that are dreadful, but I did really enjoy playing with an unfamiliar shading style and with the blended sequential art that kind of travels from one idea to the next. I hope to try this again in the future.
Then there was this, which was a silly idea for which I made a silly sketch...but I feel, in execution really leaves a lot to be desired. It didn't end up at all where I wanted it...I think I really want the stylization to be different, and the colors less saturated, and the poses a bit different and the anatomy and movement is overall bad-- but it was hot, my AC had broken, I was sweating and miserable and just reached a point of wanting the darn thing done. So I may revisit this in the future, if I get the chance. The Doctor and his TARDIS:
And on that note, I have a pile of laundry and a pile of art waiting for me. Allons-y!