I'm Not Dead I'm Just Bad

 It's been a while since the last update--I'm incredibly busy with a variety of personal things. I know no one reads these, but I still want to keep this as an archive for what it takes to become the kind of artist I'll hopefully become. Anyway, these are the two sketches I'm proud enough of to share here:

This is just a random witch I doodled--I want to get much better at character design, and I had a fun time with her. Proportionally and anatomically I think I did a good job here, but as ever, I need to work on feet and hair.

 

This is a study of...I'm not exactly sure. I think it's Sakura Kirishima? Everything's good except the likeness. I should do more of these--gesture is fine as a study tool but it'll never teach you practical anatomy in context.

Speaking of, here are some pictures of my sketchbook. A lot of gesture and thoughtless doodles. I haven't really had the opportunity to practice the way I want to recently, but I'm on holiday for the next few weeks so that'll change. You can see why I'm not proud of these, but I figure it's important to show my progress, warts and all.

One of my big problems is that anything here that isn't a gesture sketch probably took like 15 mins by itself. I'm really slow.

At this point, I want to emphasize I've gone through three full sketchbooks and a half-sized sketchbook. This is taking a long time--not unexpected, but even with a fairly serious commitment to art, progress is slow.

I've also recently done some personal projects which I won't show here. Again, not much out of the ordinary.

My art goals for the coming year are

• to do way more full-sized studies (esp. of sexy people doing sexy things because that's my ultimate goal which I haven't made much progress on)
  
• to learn hair, feet, and knees
• to learn expressions
  
• to not put form and gesture practice to the side
• to get faster and more confident
• to start learning color
• to start practicing digital painting more often

I'd like to put out a few finished pieces as well, but I'm too much of a baby when it comes to color and the digital process to promise anything.

Interesting tip! I study a lot from reddit galleries, and you can hack together a timed porn gesture session by using the timer function on redditp, for example, https://www.redditp.com/r/nsfw/ with a 120 second timer. This is great because doing this manually, managing a timer, being disciplined, etc. is hard to do yourself, especially if you're looking at reference pictures that make you horny.

One (1) Finished Illustration

I finally finished one thing, and I'm actually pretty proud of it and happy to have my name attached to it. I think I learned a lot here. I have a couple of takeaways I have for my next pic:

• I'm not ready to churn out illustrations. Pushing myself to draw something without having the motivation to do it means I accomplish nothing and learn nothing. Do things for fun.
• Figure out why locking transparent on the linework layer didn't work. For some reason on certain patches the pen would draw at full opacity over no lines. Maybe partially- but not fully-erased? Check by doing "selection from layer"
• Background can be even more sparse. More black is fine. There's not a lot of background detail/saturation in this pic but I should've gone even harder.
  
• Integrate reference when sketching.
• Mix of solid color shapes + a little shading worked well. Was experimenting a little with using ThiccWithaQ's/Hades' coloring style. Happy with my pic but don't think I did justice to either inspiration. Coloring is hard.
• FEMBOYS👏UNTIL👏I👏DIE

 

Skull/head studies

Yesterday's studies

Behold--tiny color studies of figures and portraits as well as some quick gesture drawing.

For the past three days being my first real study of color I'm very happy with the result, and how by the end I managed to build up some of these backgrounds intuitively. Can definitely see my progress, and this is good knowledge to use in comic work/finished pieces.

The gestures are fine. I also went to a park and did some trad quickdraw, which I was less happy with. Guess I'm no Rembrandt.

I need to study expressions DESPERATELY--right now my drawn faces are way way below my standards. Going to hopefully start that tonight and finish tomorrow.

Also I drew a butt a couple months ago and forgot about it lmao

Quarantine Studies

I'm still on that grind...I'm gonna do it, I'm going to become a great artist!

Done these studies over the past couple of days. I've been doing studies traditional as well. There's a lot I need to focus on, but the big thing I've been trying to improve upon is gesture and form.

Also, color! I'm still a baby at color. It's like trying to learn to draw all over again. Did some "tiny studies" from ctrl paint to try to internalize it. Working on the same but with figures/portraits to learn skin tone.

I want to do another full piece soon. In the meantime these are some sketches (maybe about 1hr each) that I did this morning after tuning into some InCase streams.

Damn, now that I'm looking at it, their right leg on the right image is actually broken, like broken broken. Damn.

Need to study: gesture, esp. NSFW gesture. Asked about how to study NSFW on an InCase stream and he suggested to set up a slideshow app for gesture drawing using porn. I did a little of that, but untimed. Timed is key. Also practice expressions!

Sketches

Catching up, after neglect

Alright, I started letting this fall by the wayside in mid-October? And this is supposed to help document my growth--so let's work on that.

Mid-November:

Never finished it. Very cute, surprisingly good left hand, but I was disappointed by the face, the head, and importantly, this process. Really, really big fan of these InCase-style highlights though. Also I adore the way her pussy looks here.

(I know I rely on Case too singularly as an inspiration, but since getting a twitter I've diversified my inspirations a little, shut up.)

December:

A sketch that was good enough for me to polish up. I'm doing the same sort of highlights and shadows here. These hands are trash, and I had to reshape and resize her head a bunch once importing it into Clip Studio. Other than that, a fun sketch. But those thighs...I wanted to draw a thick trans girl with a dynamic pose but I should've done more creative work into making her thick than just making her thighs thicker than her torso.

Was in a femdom mood recently. I feel like this is the best work I've done in my life. Obviously I see some things I could've done better (funky line width, not sure that's how hips/armpits work, highlights/hair are kind of mushy... I'll stop there) but I'm seriously proud of this.

Some of my main inspirations for the creative choices I made here are @BoxOfWant and @taamyra.

January (i.e. today)

Twink with a sword! I'm standing up, chanting. Twink with a sword! Twink with a sword! I'm on top of the table now, shouting.
A fun, quick sketch, messy as hell.

So here's the takeaway: I'm still bad. Or, at least, I'm not yet making the kind of art that compares with my initial inspirations. I need to improve in gesture, workflow, perspective, anatomy, thinking with forms, hair, composition, framing, style, color, etc. etc. etc..

What excites me is that looking back at myself from last year I can see a ton of improvement. Even since the summer, I can tell from looking at my first finished work--compared to what I can do right now, it looks very flawed. Here's to another year of growth!