Sooo... wolves (pic heavy, but they are not heavy pics)
Okay, I've been drawing lately. There was a month of fury last year (May) and I decided to make a project for which I needed to learn how to draw. Because it's a project important to me and I wanted to do it right. The first image of that project features a wolf and a swan. I've yet to start on the lanscape that inevitably is going to surround them, but at the moment I'm focusing on the animals. So, yeah, that's pretty much it, I'm making studies and copying photographs at the moment. Will get to the fun stuff (sketching and drawing without a model) when I think I'm done with the studies.
Here are the pics and my thoughts about my own evolution, because sharing it to the world gives me some additional motivation in a way, and I need all I can get.
So, well, let's face it, pretty crappy sketches. I was interested in the general shape and stuff and I wanted to work quickly. So it looks pretty much like shit.
More quick shit and some hawks for good measure because they are versatile and it might help me to see how wings in general work.
Quick swans, that are apparently easier to get right than quick wolves. Still crappy, though.
More crap. This was sort of a turning point for me, because drawing crap wasn't going to magically help me to draw well. So I decided to start from the very beginning and start paying attention.
And the very beginning means anatomy. You know, bones, muscles, stuff. I studied Veterinary Sciencies, I'm actually familiar with how skeletons work and how canids should look like, so I started to pour a little bit more of effort.
Not so familiar with the skeleton of swans, they're fucking weird. But everything started to make a bit more sense. Also, graceful animals are rewarding to draw.
Back to the wolfs and how they move.
And swans. Still trying to be quick and doing a shoddy work on the wings/feathers.
So I decided to stop being a lazy fuck and finally understand the fucking disposition of the feathers inside the wings. It's not so hard, really. Well, it shouldn't be, it sort of is. But still, more attention.
And, even more attention to detail. No loose, wonderfully alive strokes at the moment because I'm not working on the expressivity yet, I'm still trying to work out how the fucking feathers overlap each other. But I'm getting there. The pic on the top right is one I drew at the beginning and you can appreciate how the feathers are much more realistic and well done. So, yeah, progress.
And back to the wolves. Just easy stuff to get in touch again with the things.
Okay, the first one is terrible but, in my defence, I'm not that good with twisted bodies. But, again, I'm on it. But you can see how I'm not cutting corners with the fur anymore because texture is also important and I need to know the direction of the fucking hairs. Which, again, it's not difficult at all, but still. Practice.
More wolves. More defined lines but also more fur. Still easy poses.
So, you see, what makes talented people to choose to do something and become better and better at it, is the rewarding feeling you get when you draw something and you like it. More or less. Comparatively. So here I started to like what I was doing and decided to plan the pages instead of just drawing randomly. Because, now that I had started to pay attention, most of them actually looked like wolves. Not the poor things in the bottom right, they look like chihuahuas, but I'm still having trouble with foreshortenings and skewed points of view. But still, getting there.
Still fucking up on occasion, but everytime it gets easier.
Okay, you see that guy happily running? That was also a turning point. Because I sketched it reaaaally quickly. I mean, I'm getting better at getting the proportions right without messing up badly. I'm very slow, it takes me forever to draw anything because I have to redo it many times until I get it right. So I was very happy when I was able to draw that wolf and there was no leg too short or too long and everything was mostly were it should. Go me.
That means that I consider myself ready for more difficult pics like fighting scenes and heavy interaction of two figures. I usually suck at that. Which is why I have to practice it, of course. But, hey, I still combine it with easy poses because I do have a life and it takes far longer to do the complicated stuff (makes sense).
So, well, I went for a quite complicated shot there and for another one with corvids, which are always fun. Maybe I should have fixed the composition of that one, but I realized it too late. In any case, sorry for not rotating the pic.
Aaaand. more interaction and tension and not-so-easy stuff. And that's it, for the moment.
I'm mostly happy but also a bit worried... maybe I'm obsessing too much with the details because I want the pics to look pretty but that means that I'm not working as fast as I should in learning the structures and movement or developing a personal style? The ballpoint pen helps with the attention (because when you know you can't erase, you sure as fuck put the effort to get it right at the first attempt), but it's also a slow technique and I can't spend all my time drawing wolves forever. Also, I don't want to end up drawing only realistic stuff. But I do understand that I need to study reality before getting into breaking the rules and doing it my own way?
I DO NOT KNOW. LIFE IS HARD. ARTING IS HARD. COMPLAINING, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS VERY EASY.
Okay, and that's pretty much it.
Also posted at https://lauand.dreamwidth.org/130768.html, if you'd rather read it there or want to enter a discussion with
comments.