September '15 Sketchbook

Sketchbook time! I feel like I did a lot more mixed media stuff this month than actual drawing. :-/ Oh well, Inktober is coming, so that will take care of that problem!

onward and upward,

Bethany

Broken Robot

Once upon a time, about 2 and 1/2 years ago, I knew I wanted to tell stories with pictures. I had zero clue how to do so (this was before all my awesome classes and web resources), but I bought a book on storyboarding and skimmed through it. Then, one night, while writing in my prayer journal, I started contemplating the idea of being inherently broken and what that would look like. I doodled a little robot who was falling apart. Intrigued by the doodle, I simplified the design and wondered what this robot's story might be. Soon after, ideas about how broken things become healed started filling my head and a simple narrative emerged. I spent the next month or so drawing out this robot's journey, one little page at a time. When the story was finished, I scanned all 105 pages (it took for-EVER!!), assembled them into a slide show and sent it to a few close friends and family to see what they thought. Everyone said they loved it and gave me some useful feedback, and I made plans to render the whole thing in a more "polished" form after taking a break. The break lasted 2 and 1/2 years.

Fast forward to a week or two ago, when I was trying to figure out what to blog about today, and remembered Broken Robot. While I had no desire to redraw it, the story still felt meaningful to me. (I'm still impressed that it turned out as well as it did, considering I knew pretty much nothing about visual storytelling. I think it was God saying "I'm going to give you a story to tell with the right things in the right places to get you started down this path.") I decided to arrange the panels in Photoshop, darken the line art, add some tone, and post it as is. The art is pretty messy and narrative is by no means perfect, but 2 and 1/2 years of waiting has made me less self-conscious about it. I'm eager to get better at my craft (both in art and story), but I wanted to share Broken Robot with you before closing this chapter and moving on.

Ok, I'll stop talking now and let you read! ;-) 

onward and upward,

Bethany

September '15 Skill Building: Animals and Poses

Interesting mix of skill building sketches today. Jon and I made a quick stop at Cabela's this Monday so I could sketch their taxidermy animals. Taxidermy always makes me a little sad, but it is very useful for drawing; you can draw something "from life" that will actually hold still! I also had the chance to sketch some vertebrae bones (is that how you say it?), which was pretty cool. So many interesting shapes!! They reminded me of space ships. And then there are a few poses I threw in, because why not?

onward and upward,

Bethany

Character design exercise: Adventurers

In an effort to improve my character design skills (and because I needed something to blog about this week), I gave myself the assignment of creating a few Adventurers. I was actually planning on posting one half of this project today and the other half later this month, but it gained so much momentum yesterday that I ended up finishing the whole thing. Yay, momentum! For this project, I wanted to keep things loose and not get fussy or over polished. Over all, I'm happy with the end results, although I feel like my "final drawings" have less gesture and structure than my initial thumbnails, which I've also included. 

onward and upward,

Bethany