And yet I'm not on facebook.
Over the past few years I've become more and more reluctant to draw human faces unless they are stylized in some way - anime, Don Martin, etc. However, I'm working on a project now that requires illustrations, and avoiding the ones that involve humans feels like chickening out.
When I have writer's block, I get past it by just going ahead and writing the scene anyway. Write it good, write it bad, it doesn't matter - it gets me past the block, and I can come back and edit things into shape later. I'm trying the same approach here: draw faces, lots of them, to get myself used to them. So, here are four days of drawings, taking 30-60 minutes a day, doodling loosely with ballpoint pen to keep myself from getting "stage fright." These are all copied out of several books illustrated by two artists - John Neill and Eric Shanower - whose styles I like.
So...
I'm slightly hampered by my eyesight. I can't see close up as sharply as I could a few years ago, and that affects both my seeing fine detail in the little bitty pictures and my drawing. When I get more comfortable and no longer need to slavishly copy others' work I'll draw tighter images on a larger scale.
There are six characters here. One or two might be obvious - how many characters wear poppy earmuffs? - but most are obscure, one- or two-book wonders, who I just drew for practice. All the weird hairstyles belong to the same character, and in fact she has a different hairstyle in every flippin' picture, even though there might be several illustrations for the same scene. I don't much care for drawing hair either, so she was good practice.
When I have writer's block, I get past it by just going ahead and writing the scene anyway. Write it good, write it bad, it doesn't matter - it gets me past the block, and I can come back and edit things into shape later. I'm trying the same approach here: draw faces, lots of them, to get myself used to them. So, here are four days of drawings, taking 30-60 minutes a day, doodling loosely with ballpoint pen to keep myself from getting "stage fright." These are all copied out of several books illustrated by two artists - John Neill and Eric Shanower - whose styles I like.
So...
I'm slightly hampered by my eyesight. I can't see close up as sharply as I could a few years ago, and that affects both my seeing fine detail in the little bitty pictures and my drawing. When I get more comfortable and no longer need to slavishly copy others' work I'll draw tighter images on a larger scale.
There are six characters here. One or two might be obvious - how many characters wear poppy earmuffs? - but most are obscure, one- or two-book wonders, who I just drew for practice. All the weird hairstyles belong to the same character, and in fact she has a different hairstyle in every flippin' picture, even though there might be several illustrations for the same scene. I don't much care for drawing hair either, so she was good practice.