I've been following the twitter Sketch_dailies challenge for awhile now and this week, one of their topics was Doctor Who, which happens to be one of my favorite tv shows ever. Now, I don't normally participate in Sketch_dailies, but how could I pass up a chance to draw the Doctor?
After giving it some thought, I decide to draw the Fourth Doctor. I used to watch reruns of the old episodes before the show rebooted (yes, yes, I know that sounds very hipster of me), and I saw a lot of the Fourth Doctor episodes. It seemed a fitting tribute.
I pulled up some reference on Google and drew this.
It wasn't terrible, but I just wasn't satisfied with it. I've been working on my cartooning/simplification skills and this drawing felt bland. So, I tried again.
This one is a little better, but I really didn't like the head-on pose. It's hard to make a face look like it has shading and dimension when it's viewed head-on. I considered scrapping the whole idea at this point, but I decided to try for a third time. I change to a three-quarters view, which involved re-envisioning the hat angle *shudder*, and finally ended here.
Even though I still have to suppress my flaw seeking urges, I pretty happy with how this one turned out. It has a nice, stylized look, but still feels like the Fourth Doctor (who, btw, is kind of hard to draw). I submitted it to Sketch_dailies, and only cringed slightly when it showed up on my twitter feed.
The moral of the story is that sometimes, you need to keep trying until you're satisfied with what you create. This isn't always the case; sometimes you have to be ok with "good enough" and sometime you have to scrap an idea all together. But, there are plenty of times when you do have that really great drawing buried inside you and you just have to get the bad ones out of the way before you find it. So, whatever it is you're working on, make sure you aren't giving up on it too early an that you've really done your best. You'll be amazed at what can happen. ^_^
onward and upward,
Bethany
