Alright, a full ten days into the Journey, and I’ve only wanted to quit for a little bit. That’s saying something, I think.
I’ll admit, I had a moment earlier today when I began asking myself if there was any chance I wasn’t crazy for even trying to do what I’m attempting. Fortunately I was able to shake off the blues and keep on keeping on.
Amazingly, I finally managed to get a decent video render for Day 4, so that’s currently up on youtube, and the Day 4 blog entry has been updated with the better file. Recording for today’s video went smoothly as well, you’ll see it here once I get it edited and rendered. Hopefully that won’t take the next five days. (Post Edit: Only 3 days to post the video, but it was really down more to actually having the time to do the editing. Amazingly it worked on the first try.)
As far as the drawing practice and progress goes, I find myself stumbling a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I fully realize that thirty minutes to an hour of drawing every day isn’t going to get me to professional level in only ten days. It won’t even get me there in ten months. Maybe ten years, but we’ll see. Even so, I would have hoped to see a bit more improvement than I’ve been seeing.
I think the issue is my approach. I am probably attacking the problem too broadly, trying to learn too many new techniques and practices too quickly, without giving my hands and eyes enough time to really internalize them. Basically I’m getting ahead of myself and stepping on my own feet.
So, with that being said, I’ve got a new plan for the next part of the 30/30 challenge. I threw together the following image:
I don’t have to tell you it’s amazingly bad. I drew this very quickly, but still at least vaguely attempting to put into practice some of the techniques I’ve been learning. Obviously much more learning is in order. On the plus side, I think I actually know enough now to at least know what’s wrong with it, and possibly even how to fix some of it, so I’m counting that as some progress.
For example, I got the chest to pelvis proportions at least vaguely right, but the legs and head are way too small. The arms are completely out of whack as well. I’m not too chuffed about the hands or feet, since I haven’t spent any time learning those at all yet, but really I should have known better for everything else. I made pretty much every rookie mistake I’ve been learning about over the last ten days, and yes it was a super quick sketch, barely more than a doodle, but I should still know better.
I’d have just dumped it and started fresh, but then I remembered that the main point of this blog is to track my progress, and one of my main goals for this sprint is being able to draw a character like that. I realized that I don’t really have a “before” picture of that kind of drawing to compare to anything I’d be able to produce after the next twenty days, so incredibly sloppy horrible picture is here to stay, if for no other reason than to serve as a reminder of why I need to improve. You. Are. Welcome.
So, yeah, the plan. The plan actually starts with this drawing. I’m going to try to systematically break down the mistakes I’ve made in this one image, carefully study those mistakes, and practice correcting them, one at a time. Her head is terrible? Draw it over and over until it isn’t, and then draw it some more. The proportions are off? Work on the gesture and pose shapes until they are somewhat reasonable. Hands? Yeah, figure out how to draw something that could reasonably be called a hand with minimal snickering. We’ll see how it comes out.
Hopefully with more focused study and practice I’ll be able to achieve faster and more consistent improvement. It may only help me learn to draw this particular type of character, but in theory it should apply a bit more broadly, or at least lead to the next thing coming far easier.