Day 30 - delayed

Hi Folks,

Fell behind today on the book sketching. Not a lot of sleep - as the new baby decided to arrive 2 weeks a head of schedule. Not premature, but definately early. Good news is, he's healthy and really cute. Mom is also doing great.

The plan is to catch up on all the drawings so that by end of this coming week - I should be back on schedule.

Cheers,
Dan.

Day 29 Rockwell around the clock

Day 28 + 28.5 More Rockwell

Another night without the camera - had to take the photos after I finished these, but FYI: the last 3 drawings shown took about 1 hour, and the first drawing (circus image) took about 30 minutes with all stages done. This goes to explain the post heading of 28 and 28.5. Tomorrow night I will likely spend 30 minutes to complete day 29 -before moving to post 30.

Working from Rockwell continues to be a challenge and definitely trying to capture the subtleties of his paintings isn't happening for me yet. ha ha. No doubt, it will be a long time before this happens, but the drawings are so cool to work from, it really doesn't matter too much. The process is really the fun part.

Tonight my wife asked me if doing this for almost a month now, I see any improvement. The answer is yes and no. Yes - in that I am more confident in my approach and no because the more I do, the more I realize I need to learn. As I move from artist to artist, and image to image - it becomes clear that some drawings come easier than others -so that the only real constant improvement is in the refining of the process I am using.

I started something new during stage 1( the gestured stage) tonight. I am trying not to lift the pencil off the page too much (if at all as i work through the gesture.) In the past I was putting in one line for the overall pose, and then adding demarcation lines for the shoulders and hips and finally roughing in lines for the arms and legs.

Now, I am still doing this, but it's all done with one continuous line, as I move through the figure Tomorrow I promise to get in some photos of all the stages and hopefully make this a lot clearer to anyone out there that might be curious about this.

In stage 2 I am also moving towards slightly more organic shapes for the chest and pelvis areas. Images will follow in tomorrows posting.

Day 27 Norman Rockwell

After working from comics for the last few weeks, it was a nice change of pace to work from a true master - Norman Rockwell. I also loved working bigger. As with the drawings from Marvel Previews, I was able to focus on one image per page here - which made things much easier.

What I love most about his work is all the little details that he puts into an image. Every item is a story point, and nothing is extra. He also captures great expressions (body and facial) in his characters. The costumes with worn shoes and soiled clothes finish off the images to create a warm fuzzy fealing. Yeah - he drew propoganda, but he was good at it.

One of the things I started trying to do a bit more today (in the 2nd drawing) -was to block the heads in as cubes rather than simply spheres or egg shapes. Basically I am trying to add front, side and top planes to the head to help me place features. Still a long way to go, but it's a start.

In the drawing with the plumbers - I drew the character's heads as 2 dimensional shapes, rather than volumes. This seemed to work well in this case because the characters were drawn from the side/profile views. The 2nd drawing had a lot more angles, so using cubes felt better. Even still, I wasn't completely satisfied with the results.

Both images above were completed in about 1 hour total. There wasn't enough time to do the backgrounds, or really polish anything, but after looking at the results tonight I already have some things to think about for tomorrow.

I know that some of you folks out there looking at this blog do a lot of drawing each day, while others almost none. If not, it's worth asking yourself 'do I want to draw more?' -not 'why am I not drawing more?" because really its all about wanting to do it and not looking for excuses why you can't do it. It doesn't have to be book sketching, but if it is - I know you will have fun!

I recently heard an interview on CBC radio with a man who did a survey of some of the most successfull people in their professions across the USA and the number one factor of success was ...
persistance.

not talent.
not luck.
...
just plain old 'stick-to-it-ness'

those who were successful, worked at their professions for a long time, and reached the top, as many others dropped out.

If you want to be good at anything, you got to keep at it -but that means, you also got to get started. If you keep putting off what you really want to do - you will be succesful at not accomplishing it. See, the same rule that helps you reach success, can help you not reach it too -if you are persistant at avoiding that which you wish to accomplish.

remember - the more you don't do, the better you will be at not doing it. You will be a success at avoiding reaching your goals. It doesn't matter what your goal is - you get to decide.

Just decide what it is, and start taking steps, even baby steps are good. As long as you are moving towards your goals.

sorry for being so preachy. sheesh.

Day 26 - Still in Danger

Have you had enough of the Danger-themed post titles? I have. ha ha.

Tomorrow will start with something else.

Day 25 : Danger in the snow

Another day with stage 1 not shown. As I mentioned yesturday, I did stage one the other day when the camera went missing. At any rate, hopefully tonight is the last late night drawing session in a while. My hope is to go back to earlier hours in the day. Working when you're tired doesn't yield the happiest results.

Having said that - I am still jazzed about drawing from this book, so expect a few more pages to come.

Day 24

I started this page yesturday - but didn't have the camera handy at the time, so step 1 (gesture) is covered up by stage 2 above the volumes stage. In order not to cover up the volumes stage without getting a picture, I left it to be finished today (stage 3) and repeated the process for another page which I will post tomorrow. When you see it tomorrow, it will also be missing stage 1 for the same reason.

Overall -still having a great time drawing from this book - hopefully next week I will be able to work on book sketching at normal (earlier) hours so I am not as tired. I think the tiredness is really affecting the final drawing stage.

If you're new to this blog - I urge you to check out the Introduction and method section -found in the links on the right side of this page. In it I describe what I am doing, how I am doing it and what is the purpose of it all.