sort of like exercise

Gotta be honest. Been crazy busy with work, and didn’t realize it was my day on here. I usually have something lined up on the back burner, some notes, materials, some idea of what I’m going to write about. But today? Not a clue. It’s probably a good thing, because honestly it’s an excuse to push work off for a few hours and just draw something for drawing’s sake.

I tend to feel more confident in my painting than my drawing. Drawings for me tend to feel more like a battle where I’m constantly on the razor’s edge of ruining what’s happening. I can be slow, and often redrawing things several times before moving on to the next steps.

As stressful as the process can be, at the same time, I love it. I imagine it’s probably similar to what exercise feels like to people who like to exercise, where it’s challenging but there’s a payoff at the end.

For this one, I used a photo I took of our daughter Elle last week. I try to draw our kids every few months because I love their little faces so much, and also to document their progress.

Used a warm white Stonehenge paper to draw on. Love that stuff because of the color, grain, and you can really beat the hell out of it.

I don’t really have a set process for these so much as just start lightly with a 4h pencil to get general proportions in, then redraw with an hb to refine shapes before diving into the charcoal. I tend to use a few different kinds of charcoal, pencils, willow, and also the powder to stain and for soft transitions. Kind of a whatever works approach.

I try not to overwork it. Knocked off early on this one for the sake of having something to post.

Heres where I left it. Will probably and up tweaking some stuff tomorrow because I can’t leave well enough alone. Then I should probably draw the other ones. One down, three to go.

close up so you can see how messy it is.

Also drew this a few weeks back. Couple of zany characters inspired by the comic book I drew years ago. Every once in a while it’ll get dusted off and revisited. Pure comfort zone stuff here, drawn in procreate on the ipad. approach-wise, this is somewhat different from the portrait above. Sometimes its fun to not use reference and instead trying to solve based on what “feels” right. I tend to work these very constructively, starting first with a box and primitive shapes and then refining from there. This is how I’ll start a lot of my concept art type-work. Even though I will likely end up using reference material to refine things, I tend to like to start with a blank slate so the underlying foundation is’t overly influenced by it.

Would love to tackle another comic-type thing based in this universe, but there’s just no way I could keep a decent pace between work and parenting commitments. But who knows, maybe when the kiddos get older dad can get back to drawing his weird subversive comics.