Exclusive LJ Sketchblog update!
Today I am killing your friends page with no apologies. You can skip down to the drawings if you want.
It's Friday once more, and I don't have to work at the bank this Saturday! We've hired someone new, but I haven't seen this alleged new-hire yet, so I'm still working 30 hour weeks instead of the 20 hours a week I requested. The extra dough isn't really worth the time away from drawing, and it's taking a lot more of my energy than I want it to, but that's work for ya.
This week was a more productive one, as there was a noted lack of 8 solid days of non-stop family activity this week. I have more Barsoom Chibis nearing completion, but Ulysses Paxton is giving me trouble; I can't decide if he needs to be working with Ras Thavas (the Martian answer to Dr. Frankenstein; he swaps rich ugly people's brains into the bodies of younger beautiful slaves), or recoiling in horror, or angry, or what. I'll get a decent pose soon, and this week we should have a good pic, and hopefully color. Finally managed a cute banth (the Martian 10-legged lion), too. Ten legs is a lot to fit onto one torso.
For those of you who may be curious about my protracted absence online; most of it stems from fairly serious depression. Again. I almost preferred the anxiety, to be honest. At least the GERD kept me from weight gain due to comfort-eating. I haven't found a doctor, I'm not on medication, I'm not even seeing anyone professionally, but I'm trying to get hooked up with some of the professionals from my parent's church. I'm a bit leery about that last bit, but we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work, I'll try something else. As the saying goes, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Indiana was supposed to be a place where I could try and rediscover and reinvent myself, not a place to crawl under a rock and feel sorry for myself, emerging occasionally to work as a bank teller.
So trust me, you all wouldn't want to read any entries I would have written over the past 6 months. I've learned a few things though, and let go of a lot of pride I didn't realize I was holding onto. There's a few people I feel I need to apologize to, but that's an entry for another time.
I read an blog post of an interview with David Chelsea last week. He quoted Chesterton's famous saying "anything worth doing is worth doing badly." While this may seem "spluh" to most of you, I still haven't really found a way to keep my inner perfectionist at bay. I have a lot of trouble continuing to press on at something I'm having a repeated and lengthy hard time with; especially when it comes to improving at drawing. I know full well that I simply cannot improve if I don't keep drawing, yet I often find myself sitting paralyzed in front of my sketchbook. I'm trying to repeat this phrase to keep my inner "it's not good enough" voice in my head quiet. Something else Mr. Chelsea mentioned was that "creativity precedes inspiration. You have to develop the ability to produce competent work efficiently, so that when that great idea finally does strike, you can make it happen with the execution it deserves." (The blog post quoted can be read here.
I have a few projects I haven't started on because I just don't have the chops to pull them off yet. However, I'm trying to change my perspective so that this fact is a source of inspiration and encouragement, rather than a source of shame that adds to the things in my head keeping me from working.
At the end of the day, I'm still here in front of my drawing table, refusing to give up despite my inner voices screaming at me that I'll never make anything of myself with this. I may have fucked up everything else, but I really don't want my art to go the same way.
Thanks for reading all that. Now on to the Friday sketch stuff.
I've been told that my head construction sucks balls. Well, my friend said it more nicely than that, but she also suggested I start by learning to draw skulls, and build from there. So this past little bit I've been drawing me some skulls, using construction methods from both Andy Loomis and Jeff Markowsky. They're both awesome, so if you hate my skulls, blame me, not them. I still need practice, but here's a good start, I think:
And as an apology for my absence, here's the drawing I did for my dad for Father's Day. He has this drab, stark office at his community college where he teaches microbiology, and I really wanted something to give him something cool for it. So I drew this. Yes, I got the idea from xkcd (and also from Jhonen Vasquez' "Squee")
I see only the mistakes I made, but my dad really liked it. Done is beautiful.
It's Friday once more, and I don't have to work at the bank this Saturday! We've hired someone new, but I haven't seen this alleged new-hire yet, so I'm still working 30 hour weeks instead of the 20 hours a week I requested. The extra dough isn't really worth the time away from drawing, and it's taking a lot more of my energy than I want it to, but that's work for ya.
This week was a more productive one, as there was a noted lack of 8 solid days of non-stop family activity this week. I have more Barsoom Chibis nearing completion, but Ulysses Paxton is giving me trouble; I can't decide if he needs to be working with Ras Thavas (the Martian answer to Dr. Frankenstein; he swaps rich ugly people's brains into the bodies of younger beautiful slaves), or recoiling in horror, or angry, or what. I'll get a decent pose soon, and this week we should have a good pic, and hopefully color. Finally managed a cute banth (the Martian 10-legged lion), too. Ten legs is a lot to fit onto one torso.
For those of you who may be curious about my protracted absence online; most of it stems from fairly serious depression. Again. I almost preferred the anxiety, to be honest. At least the GERD kept me from weight gain due to comfort-eating. I haven't found a doctor, I'm not on medication, I'm not even seeing anyone professionally, but I'm trying to get hooked up with some of the professionals from my parent's church. I'm a bit leery about that last bit, but we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work, I'll try something else. As the saying goes, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Indiana was supposed to be a place where I could try and rediscover and reinvent myself, not a place to crawl under a rock and feel sorry for myself, emerging occasionally to work as a bank teller.
So trust me, you all wouldn't want to read any entries I would have written over the past 6 months. I've learned a few things though, and let go of a lot of pride I didn't realize I was holding onto. There's a few people I feel I need to apologize to, but that's an entry for another time.
I read an blog post of an interview with David Chelsea last week. He quoted Chesterton's famous saying "anything worth doing is worth doing badly." While this may seem "spluh" to most of you, I still haven't really found a way to keep my inner perfectionist at bay. I have a lot of trouble continuing to press on at something I'm having a repeated and lengthy hard time with; especially when it comes to improving at drawing. I know full well that I simply cannot improve if I don't keep drawing, yet I often find myself sitting paralyzed in front of my sketchbook. I'm trying to repeat this phrase to keep my inner "it's not good enough" voice in my head quiet. Something else Mr. Chelsea mentioned was that "creativity precedes inspiration. You have to develop the ability to produce competent work efficiently, so that when that great idea finally does strike, you can make it happen with the execution it deserves." (The blog post quoted can be read here.
I have a few projects I haven't started on because I just don't have the chops to pull them off yet. However, I'm trying to change my perspective so that this fact is a source of inspiration and encouragement, rather than a source of shame that adds to the things in my head keeping me from working.
At the end of the day, I'm still here in front of my drawing table, refusing to give up despite my inner voices screaming at me that I'll never make anything of myself with this. I may have fucked up everything else, but I really don't want my art to go the same way.
Thanks for reading all that. Now on to the Friday sketch stuff.
I've been told that my head construction sucks balls. Well, my friend said it more nicely than that, but she also suggested I start by learning to draw skulls, and build from there. So this past little bit I've been drawing me some skulls, using construction methods from both Andy Loomis and Jeff Markowsky. They're both awesome, so if you hate my skulls, blame me, not them. I still need practice, but here's a good start, I think:
And as an apology for my absence, here's the drawing I did for my dad for Father's Day. He has this drab, stark office at his community college where he teaches microbiology, and I really wanted something to give him something cool for it. So I drew this. Yes, I got the idea from xkcd (and also from Jhonen Vasquez' "Squee")
I see only the mistakes I made, but my dad really liked it. Done is beautiful.