October '14 Skill Building: cats

This month, I practiced drawing cat poses. Cats are beautiful, graceful creatures, but they are very challenging to draw. It took me about a week, but I think I've finally figured out the forms and anatomy. Now, it's just a matter of practice.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Art from My Trip to the Beach

Well, here I am; back from the beach! Our trip was...not as smooth as we would have liked. Adversity took the form of cloudy weather, robust winds, an upset stomach, and an enthusiastic mosquito population. But, with determination, fortitude, and a fair amount of bug spray, we persevered through it all and manged to enjoy ourselves despite the circumstances! That being said, it's good to be back home again. It really is the best of places. ^_^

Since the weather was less than favorable, I couldn't paint outside like I had planned. However, I did manage to take a sketchbook out with me and do a few rough sketches, which I later inked and colored. I also did some indoor studies; one oil landscape of the view out one of our windows and two watercolor sea shell paintings. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

September sketchbook '14

I decided to post this month's sketchbook sketches early because Jon and I will be at the beach next week!! Woot! Woot! I may or may not be able to post next week, but I'll be back again for sure the first week of October.

onward and upward,

Bethany

September skill building: skulls and action poses

Skulls and action poses are kind of a weird combo, but that's what I ended up drawing this past month. I also worked on arms and expressions, but those turned out creepy/lame, so I opted not to include them.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Doctor Who, Sketch_dailies, and not giving up

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

August '14 Sketchbook

I did better this month in my sketchbook than last month. I also ended up with a wider range of stuff, too.

August marks a few milestones, actually. I started this blog three years ago in August and as of this month, I have been blogging every Thursday (with a few exceptions) for a whole year! 

Oh, and......

onward and upward,

Bethany

Plein air painting

I've been trying to practice "en plein air" painting, (which means "in the open air" in French), over the past two weeks. Unfortunately, I'm really, really terrible at it. (In fact, I just got back from painting and all my attempts were so bad, I only kept one of them.) These are the best ones I have so far. But, I'm determined to keep working on it in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I'll get the tiniest bit better some day. 

onward and upward,

Bethany