As you can see, this drawing is actually from today. The idea I had was to depict people doing normal things, but add an unusual feature to them (in this case a second set of eyes). For example: the rightmost figure is actually crossing his eyes in two different directions while sticking out his tongue, and then the picture below him is him laughing at this action afterward. Obviously, making a face and laughing about it is a very common thing to do, but add another set of eyes and it is not immediately obvious what he is doing.
This is in an attempt to see whether or not people can still identify with and enjoy the drawings as much as if they were of regular people. I expect the result to be: they can't. But that was sort of the point. I'm often taken aback by how strange I think other people can be, only to be swiftly reminded that I myself am in many ways much stranger. More than that, people could be a lot stranger and still be people. Given the idea of the subject, I tried to add extra features to the drawings that I normally wouldn't in an attempt to make them more realistic than my other drawings (such as actual nostrils). The drawing would be much better if I could actually do this to any convincing extent. I thought about whether to post this on the sabbath or not, but this is not work, it's fun. I'm still not sure if that's a good justification or not. God give me wisdom on this subject.
This is a section of a page of sketches I felt good enough about sharing. I like this particular part of the page. It's a good example of experimenting with different poses and positions and even different types of faces. I draw this particular character a lot actually when I want to emote through my drawings. Sometimes I just have to put the expressions I want to make into the more versatile people on my page. Nothing nearly as much of a mile-marker as my last post I know, but I'm trying to
learn perseverance in the little things so that I won't fail God in the
big things. A lot of that is just doing something small but good even when it
doesn't feel as impressive. At least I think so anyway. What do I know?
I'm posting this on what's basically the first real day of school for me. I was anxious earlier today, but- as always- it's all working out. Thank You, God. What I get done in school is okay, but I certainly want to do more. Those are the walls which I am referring to. Or maybe they're just the walls of making sense to anybody that reads this.
My first ever animation! For those unsure: an animation is distinct from an animatic in that all the frames are close together instead of spread out to tell a larger story. This is a simple animation of a fencer lunging with a foil. I felt this would be the right starting place for animation given the simplicity of the character design, and how well I knew the motion itself. I fence foil, so that allowed me to ensure this fencer's form was as close as I could make it. For example: the arms extend fully before the foot hits the ground. The only problem is that each paper is cut slightly differently than the rest of them, and this causes the image to wobble ever so slightly so it isn't as perfect as when I can line them all up. My only regret is that, because it's Window's Movie Maker, I can't make the frames as short as I want them and so it doesn't look as fluid as it should. Ah well. Nothing's perfect except God. I'm so excited to share this, given that animation is my reason for creating this blog in the first place.
I had originally intended this to be a gif, but among other complications, there were too many frames (ten frames altogether, including the end credit). This is also the first time I used in-betweening, where I drew the first and last frames and then slowly did the frames in the middle of the ones I had already drawn. I was amazed at how well this worked and how easy it was to do. Once I had the first and last frames, I was able to do all the other frames in less than a day. Each frame only took about fifteen minutes. I just have to keep reminding myself how easy this is so that I keep doing more. I certainly didn't think I'd get this project done today! God helped me do this the whole way through. Praise be to God! He fulfills His servants' wishes even while they are serving Him.
The trouble with sharing random bits from my sketches is that I want to share them but feel that these sketches and whims of ideas are at least to some extent inferior with the work I have already put on this site. This is especially true since I have shown good work and am eager to show more, but I'm working on so many different things in an effort to improve them that none are finished (or anywhere close to it).
In short, it feels like this sketch. This drawing started as my attempt to draw a different cartoon body type besides "really tall and really long." After that, I added a stick figure and suddenly it told a story. The smaller figure is eager to meet and befriend the bigger one, but the idea of doing so must look impossible to him. I feel the same way when I'm talking to anyone I'm not completely familiar with. I also feel this way sharing my two-bits of drawing with potentially the whole of the internet and any future employers. The stick figure is succeeding where I normally fail. I can only hope God puts my efforts to His own good use, because I'm pretty much powerless to even do what this stick figure is doing.
I recently organized all the drawings I've done into a couple labelled drawers, instead of allowing them to accumulate in various stashes. The result was that I discovered a lot more of my random sketches were sharable than I presumed. Like this guy for example. For some reason or another however, I had a sudden rush of possessiveness. I think I'll get over it eventually, but I compromised by scanning just this socket man off a large page full of sketches. I've usually thought sockets looked happy. This one looks kind of like a video game character. I'd be interested in depicting this character in different positions (and drawing him so he looked happier). The original drawing is very tiny, so this image is extremely zoomed in. I did it in pen.
No joke here. Just a straightforward message I wanted to put out. I got a bit carried away and tried my hand at lettering while I was at it. I don't usually use the word "suck" to describe anything unless I'm speaking literally because it is so vague, and it seems kind of childish to me. But in this case it's applicable specifically because of those traits. I haven't made any deals with devils personally, but I can say from personal experience that devils just suck in general. In case anyone is wondering where this came from, I was thinking about the plot of the play "Faust" when I decided to draw this. I have some scrap paper I'm trying to use. Coincidentally, today is Friday the 13th.
I tried to make all the letters in "devils" off by just a little bit to emphasize how they literally can't do anything right (being removed from all that is good and right as they are). Look at the other letters for comparison. I was originally going to shade in both "deals" and "devils" to emphasize them, but then I realized that "devils" both don't really deserve that effort and couldn't do so much as that properly. It's a good thing God is taking care of everything.
This is a landscape I worked on for a couple weeks in my art class and finished this week. It's from a view of my backyard. This is what it looks like when the farthest part of the backyard is in sunlight, but the closest part is still in partial shadow because of the trees. The middle path is just worn from my pacing, there is no official or dirt path there.
The drawing is not perfect because it's from my memory. It couldn't fit in my printer scanner so the quality of the drawing suffers from my poor photography skills. I wanted to share it anyway. I'm not consciously aware of having learned anything especially, but I've noticed my other drawings have improved somewhat so I think this helped.
