Why Reference Matters

So I've been continuing with the randomly-themed-sketch thing, but I've discovered that it has a much more useful (but annoying) function than merely staying fresh..  It's doing a great job of highlighting my weaknesses.  With each drawing, before I've even put the pencil down I'm already seeing things I should have staged better; designs and poses I should have pushed further; drawings without personality, etc.  I've been grudgingly adding and adding to the list of things I need to work on, but a few days ago I stumbled across one that really bugged me.

I decided the day's theme would be Walruses and I drew this...

.....As it turned out, I had no friggin' idea how to draw a walrus |:\  That clearly wouldn't do; it's not like I have a huge career of drawing walruses, but nothing bad ever came out of understanding your world better.  This weekend I took some time to go study up at the local library.  Here are some sketches I did looking at photo-references I found in a book on seals.

As I drew these I focused on the focal points, figuring out how things worked and how they related. Then I went from there to a coffee-shop to play a little with what I'd learned.

Still nothing master-quality, but they're sure better than the first one.  They at least demonstrate some awareness of the original source, and once I had a grip of the foundation I got to think less about trying to render a diagram of a walrus and more about what I could have that walrus doing to give the sketch some personality.

Education helps.  When you find yourself totally stuck the best thing you can do is go away, learn more about what you're trying to do, and then attack again with a more enlightened approach.

Daily Sketch Theme: "In spaaaaace"

Daily Sketch Theme: "Out On A Limb"!

Daily Sketch Theme: "Birds!"

AVAA, Aug. 15 & 22

AVAA is short for the Austin Visual Arts Association, and among their other activities they hold life-drawing sessions multiples times a week! In the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get back in the habit of hitting their Monday night sessions.  Here's a sampling of what's come of that.

Naked Lunch + Doctor Sketchy sketches -- August 13 & 14

(I'm late posting these; sorry :\)

The session started off as always, with a bunch of 1-minute gestures, then went to 3-minute and 7-minute poses...

..And by the time the session was over I was furious at myself over what I'd managed over the course of the three hours.  I know short-pose life-drawing isn't about producing good artwork, but that wasn't much consolation.  I'm clearly not where I wanna be, so the next day I also hit a Doctor Sketchy session that happened to be in town.  The theme?  Conan The Barbarian!


They brought a pro bodybuilder down from Dallas to be the model for Conan, and he was backed up by models Taffeta Darling (in the Red Sonja costume) and Danni Danger as an intrepid cavegirl.  All the while they had contests running and the Conan soundtrack from the 80's as the background music.  That's the makings for a pretty fun session!

ACE Sketches and wrap-up

So all around, Albuquerque was great!  The convention was full of cool stuff going on, the people who came by the tables were really nice, the scenery driving in and out of NM was amazing, and there was this little diner called Zohra's right across the street from the convention that I fell right in love with.

Here's a sampling of the drawings I did while I was there..

I'd never really drawn Power Girl before this show; figured I'd give it a try.

This was a jam-piece that a bunch of CCP Comics' artists drew up for the event's organizer.  The artists for each character, from left to right, were Matt Campbell, myself, Vo Nguyen, Rita Moore, Sam Lotfi, and Eroll See.

Toyed around with sketch cards during the lulls in the show.