Scarlet Tanager Progress Shots

This drawing is part of a personal project of mine to draw several species of birds pulled from a birds of north america book I like to use as a reference. This particular picture is of a Scarlet Tanager.

First I starting with a basic sketch of the bird and the perch he would be sitting on.

I used my camera to photograph the sketch so it didn't turn out quite as well as it would have if I had scanned it. But it's good enough to tell that I mainly sketched the basic outline of the bird with some messy detailing in the wings. I normally go over my lines with a prismacolor micron pen and it is this step where I clean up my line art and finish prepping for the coloring steps.

I've been practicing on rendering details through my markers and colored pencils instead of using the line art, this way the line are is just a basic outline. Now the drawing is ready for color. I start off by coloring in the background with pastels to keep it soft and lacking in great detail to keep the focus on the scarlet tanager. Once the pastels are laid down I started putting down the base colors of the bird, the branch he is sitting on, and a few more branches with leaves.

I noticed immediately after scanning that his head was pretty harsh on the eyes. The yellow, mixed with the orange was way too bright that not even messing with the levels in photoshop fixed it. I didn't want to put another layer of marker color over it, so I saved that troublesome spot for the colored pencils to fix.

After the marker was done, I ended up letting the drawing sit for a bit as I worked on other projects. Last night I finally came back to it and used my prismacolor pencils to render the details and add in darker shadows and brighter highlights. I even managed to darken up his head so that bright yellow wasn't so horrible anymore. I completed the picture by adding in some white ink into the feathers and branches.

I'm very proud of this piece, I think it's one of my best realistic type of pictures so far and I reasserted the fact that I really enjoy drawing birds.

ACEO Excercise Results

In my previous post, I gave myself a self imposed assignment to draw for at least twenty minutes a day for the next two weeks using ACEOs of my comic’s characters as the theme. Here are the results.

 

 

 

Here are the names of the characters from left to right, starting at the top left hand corner. (This is also the order I drew them all in))

 

Holy, Latz, Kizaar, Isaria

Xaphain, Rae’Kia, Sheena, Shynta

Kaiten, Azahri, Sirius, Alloy

Archion, Brayan, Recca

 

A good majority of these characters do not have completed designs so the colors may be a bit off when they start making their appearances in my comic, Recca’s Champions. And some of them I tried to use a brown color pallet to give them a sepia-like tone, but I didn’t like it so I switched back to full color.

 

All in all these were pretty simple to draw and I had a lot of fun with them, though I wasn’t able to draw one a day for twenty minutes like I had originally planned. I hit a snag that caused me to miss a couple of days. Luckily they were easy to make up and I even made an extra one.

 

My next goal regarding ACEOs is to make 100 of them by January 15, 2012 so I can start the first step towards opening an online store and selling my artwork. I’ll post updates on my progress as I go.

Disconnecting to Reconnect

I’ve been reading a blog by Dan Goodwin called ‘A Big Creative Yes to the creativity within’ which gives advice, motivation, inspiration and all that good stuff on sparking one’s creativity. It’s been a very insightful blog to read since many of the topics I find pertains to me (and I’m sure thousands of others) His words have caused me to reflect on where I stand now on my ever extending path of creativity and let out a bemoaning sigh as I realize that it’s being choked off by all of the different projects and responsibilities I’ve been accumulating over the years. I think if I have any hope of rebuilding my creative spark so it’ll burn brighter than ever, I need to fully recognize what projects I’m trying to do right now so I can start reducing my list to something much more manageable.

Step One - Creating a List

The mind is a wondrous thing, I’ve found myself surprised on numerous occasions by how much information it can gather. And how well it’s stored all of the different projects I’ve been working on over the past several years, many of which I can still claim as a WIP that hasn’t made much progress. Please bear with me as I list out these projects as they come to mind. For the sake of privacy, sanity and whatnot, I’m just going to publish the list of things that pertain specifically to my artistic endeavors and not my own personal obligations.

Recca’s Champions

Musings

Aerie

Digmon - Nexus - Rising Dusk

Muse’s Ramblings

Art Study List

Bird List

Gryphon List

Colored Serpents

Countless individual picture ideas

Opening up an Ebay/Etsy Store

Opening up Commissions

Managing DG Studios Fan Page on Face Book

Managing relations on Face Book/Deviant Art

Revamping my website

MusingsAerie Blog

- etc.

I suppose with it being all listed out it doesn't really look too terrible, but the magnitude of everything needed to complete these projects makes the list endless. Recca’s Champions, Musings and Aerie for example are all ideas for graphic novels, all of which are planned out to be several chapters long and with a decent sized cast of characters. The Art Study List, Bird List and Gryphon List combined make up 200+ potential drawings.

Step Two - Reducing the List

Reducing this condensed (Yet infinitely long) list will give me some goals to strive for that will be much easier to manage. I don’t want to completely forget any of this though so I’ll store all of these into an ideas notebook that I can look at every so often to keep my motivation fresh. Though with as big as this content is I’m thinking that a few computer folders might be an easier way to record everything rather than a physical notebook.

- Recca’s Champions

- Countless individual picture ideas

- Revamping my website

- MusingsAerie Blog

- Musings

- Aerie

- Digmon - Nexus - Rising Dusk

- Muse’s Ramblings

- Art Study List

- Bird List

- Gryphon List

- Colored Serpents

- Opening up an Ebay/Etsy Store

- Opening up Commissions

- Managing DG Studios Fan Page on Face Book

- Managing relations on Face Book/Deviant Art

I’ve crossed out twelve of the sixteen categories on my list, leaving me with four things left. If I focus my attention on these four things instead of all sixteen then I can gradually get to a point where I can choose another four and keep going. I think the biggest challenge is making sure that I stick to it instead of going back to juggling everything again.

Step Three - Set up a Daily Routine

Ok, so now my list is looking much smaller and more manageable. My next step now is to get to working on these four projects. I’ve seen on two different blogs now that working at something a little at a time all the time is more effective than working in huge chunks of time less often. This is something I know I’m bad at. I generally like to wait for the weekend to draw, but then the weekend always seems too busy so I put it off…it’s a vicious cycle. I’m going to need to start some experiments to see when is the best time for me to fit in those small sessions of time where drawing is all I do every day. Then I can concentrate on the bigger blocks of time available.

This leads me to my first self imposed assignment:

- I will draw 20 minutes a day for the next consecutive 14 days starting now.

- My subject matters will be ACEO’s of the characters from Recca’s Champions

- It is my goal to finish each ACEO within that 20 minute time span. Meaning I should have 14 ACEO’s by the end of this assignment that I will share on my next blog entry.

Wish me luck,

~Amy