Fail fail fail. Clearly, I am out of practice. Still, an update is an update, amirite?

( in ur lj, savin ur f-list formatting. )

Tremble before my crappy 60-minute self-portrait! Rawr!

In 40 minutes I turn 29 years old.

TWENTY NINE.

omgwhat. i'm so old QQ

Anyways, just wanted to give a shoutout to my Milwaukee/Madison/NewGlarusCowzCity gaming group for the surprise partay and the PSP (and FF Dissidia and FF Crisis Core)! Now I need to really hunker down and decide if I want to get Persona 3 for the PS2... or the PSP. Fuckers :P

Okies, back to the daily grind!

Yeah, I pretty much fell off the earth for a while. This is what I've been doing the past few months:

Working.
Reading.
Writing.
Drawing.
Gaming (D&D 4th = suxorz. Pathfinder = WIN).
Playing WoW.
Crushin' on Anne Hathaway.
Finished Infinite Undiscovery.
Started Star Ocean 4.
Bought a PS3.
Got the Blu-Ray edition of The Devil Wears Prada.
Got my friend Bryant to admit that Meryl Streep is hawt.
Visiting friends in Madison, Chitown, and New Glarus (WTF cowz).
Skipped GenCon =(
Taking care of Mom after her third surgery (3 in less than a year! Woot?).
Attended a wedding for my friends Lyle and Molly.
Started working out with weights.
Bought a pull-up stand; still can't do a real pull-up yet Q_Q
Not checking LJ on a regular basis.

... yep.

K, back to work. I'll try to be one more regularly, I promise :3

Ok, so the first one is from yesterday (04/14/09) but I didn't have time to scan it at work. So here it is.

Bridgeman studies, 20 minutes, pen/Moleskine.

( More Bridgeman, again. )

This one is a self-portrait I did, based on a photo I took of myself with my iPhone while I was getting ready for work. I drew it with ball point pen, in my moleskine, in about 30 minutes.

WARNING: I'm tall, I'm geeky, I'm overweight, and my glasses are out of style. If you have any built-up preconceptions of how I should look, plz to leave them at the door (unless, of course, your preconceptions match the preceding description - then you're golden).

( That being said, here's my sketch. )

And here's the photo ref.

( You can't say I didn't warn you! )

I totally messed up on the perspective, and my lines are way too sketchy, but I figured it was worth a shot. It was a nice challenge, if nothing else. It was good to draw something other than anatomy studies :D

Yeah, I'm posting this on the 13th, but my weekend was packed. I didn't draw anything today because I'm sick, so... yeah.

Anyway, I did this Friday night at gaming, before we started actually playing. It was a Bammes study (from Die Gestalt des Menschen [thanks to black_inkfinity for the correction!], which should be arriving on the 16th this week). The picture on the left is my first go, with the saggy boob and the thin waist. The one on the right is my second attempt. I don't even want to know how long it took, haha.

( NSFW - nude female study. Muscles only, but still. )

Done in my Moleskine, in ballpoint pen.

http://www.kaiju.com/

Are you effin' kidding me?!?

Another daily Bridgeman study, 20 minutes in ballpoint pen in my Moleskine. I decided to post a scan of the original page from the book first, and then my practice work. This way you can see that the reason I didn't draw a well formed hand is because HE didn't draw a well formed hand :P

( The original page. )

( My study of the original page. )

Yes, another Bridgeman study. Surprise, surprise! 20 ~ 25 minutes total, using ballpoint pen.

( Hey, it's good practice! )

(ick, I needs to work on line confidence, kthx)

I'm hoping that by following along and trying to reconstruct some of Bridgeman's images with his own method will help me get more comfortable than I have been in the past. Like... I always understood the square and cylinder methods in theory, but I struggled (and still do!) in actually USING it for all of my figure drawings.

I'm hoping to set some time aside to work on female rendering, because... I like women :3

Also, I'm falling in love with the Moleskines. They don't handle Copics quite the way I'd like, but they're standing up to everything else.

I took a bit of a longer lunch break, since I got here at 8:15AM this morning, so I did a pen sketch of my computer mouse, and then I colored one of them with my cool gray Copics (well, it was more of a value study, to be honest, but it's all dark colors anyway, haha!)

Image 1: The pen sketches - 15 minutes for the whole page.
( Who knew drawing a mouse would be such a PITA? )

Image 2: My Copics work better with the copier paper at work than they do with my friggin' cheapie sketchbook. SAD.
( I think it looks pretty neat for a first try! )

From 04/06/09:

This was a 10 minute Bridgeman study done in my junk sketcbook:
( A quickie, lolz. )

From 04/07/09:

A longer Bridgeman study (oh yay 20 minutes!) done in my Moleskine:
( The fecking scanner at work only does B&W, so you don't get to see the off-white paper :/ )

Both were done in black ballpoint pen. I'm trying to get more of a grasp on how the joints interconnect, so... yeah. Bridgeman does a pretty good job of showing that, lolz. I just need to work on getting it in my thick skull.

OH HAY CAPSLOCK TUESDAY FANATICS: MY DAILY SKETCHES ARE IMMUNE TO TEH CAPSLOCK, AT LEAST FOR INITIAL POSTS. JUST EFF WHY EYE.

ARGLEBARGLE

So I got a 10% cool gray yesterday. And of course the scanner didn't pick it up. Yay!

Anyway, another Greek bust behind the cut:
( He has a nose, I swear! And the ref I used is below my sketch - credit where credit is due and all that... )

20~25 minutes, I think.

Get your towels ready, cuz it's about to get wet ~

I mean, don't drop the soap ~

I mean, aw, eff it - guess who FINALLY got in some official hot water?

...

No, that wasn't me, I swearz.

It was my old boss!

http://www.jsonline.com/business/42365382.html

MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Suck it, AB!

"Couldn't be reached for comment" lolz. Let me go bug the guy at the comic book shop who still works for with this clown and see what the what is.

I spent most of my lunch break reading about Bargue studies, so I only had about 10 minutes to work on this.

( Yes, I was able to scan it today, shush :P )

I did this in my "throwaway" sketchbook, since I used some Copic markers, and I found out yesterday that they kind of bleed through the paper in the moleskines. It was a pose from Bridgeman; I just tried adding some volume to it. It's not great, but not too bad from 10 minutes worth of work, I suppose :3

Probably 25 minute total, since I dicked around on Google to find an image of a Greek bust I could use as reference material.

Of course, I didn't save the link, so... yeah. Go me!

( Blurry picture is blurry - I took a photo of the sketch with my iPhone. )

I did this in my new moleskine sketchbook. They are pretty sharp, I will not lie. I'm still debating making the moleskine my new "de facto" sketchbook, or if it's going to be more of a "heavy duty studies" one (I have a cheapie one for gesture drawings and PoseManiacs stuffs).

I've been kind of scarce online, so I figure maybe I should update real quick.

Been playing some WoW - mostly tanking, but I got to DPS a bit this weekend. Yay!
Been writing, but not posting yet - still polishing stuff up first.
Got bit by the art bug again! Woot!
Speaking of art - I downloaded the trial for Paint Tool SAI. OMGAMAZING~~
Enjoying the hell out of my PS3. Valkyria Chronicles FTW.
Working on computers for family members (again).

The most important update, though, is that I DON'T have skin cancer. Yay! I have a few moles that need to be watched, but that's about it. /phew!

Okay, back to work before the VP walks around here again >_>'

15 minutes of studying Bridgeman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life, focused mainly on the balance and rhythm sections.

( Ignore the massive fail at the bottom of the image! )

Bridgeman does have a lot of movement and rhythm in his studies, which I'm hoping to incorporate into my own art (many of my figures seem too stiff and rigid to me).

15 minute failsketch of a stapler. Woo for me failing at perspective!

( Under the cut, lolz )

Eight minute sketch of a Diet Coke can:

( Put behind a cut to save your f-list's formatting. )

EDITED: cuz I messed up the img src code. WTF N00B.

Man, three months of NO PoseManiacs, and then jumping back into it, really shows how much your drawing skills can atrophy... AND the right side of my brain is aching like whoa.

Ick. I can't even draw a gesture outline of a simple figure in the 30 second time frame. Christ.

To be fair, I've been writing a lot more lately (all posted to other comms, lolz), but still - no excuse!

I'll be hitting up PoseManiacs every day again, during my lunch break if nothing else, for the 30 second exercises.

/EMO MODE ON



Oh, being depressed is SO MUCH FUN. I LOVE IT.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

.__.



/EMO MODE OFF