Test Your Might!

Today, we are writing about my experiences with branching out and seeing how far my skills have come over the course of the last year and a half since I have started drawing again.

As every artist has written, you need to draw everyday. While trying to find a new piece to "study" daily, I realized nothing in my catalog of saved images was enticing. Thereby, I decided to hit Instagram, and the Frazetta girls posted this painting (Viking), which I absolutely love! But all of my FF studies are based on his drawings and not his paintings. Instead of backing down, I decided to risk it.

What did I do to test my might:

1. I drew only four quadrants for a grid and free-handed the sketch

2. I did not use photoshop to threshold and show me where the "black" should go

3. I then made executive decisions on how to ink and how to color

It's not perfect! Or as my art teach in high school would quote me his teacher's saying, "it's shit." I have been spending a considerable time thinking about my teacher, Dennis Ray. If he could only see now the impact he had on me and my interest in art ... because when I was his student, I was the worst. I would never practice at home, and would only draw with him for an hour once a week for a few years. Imagine, if I had applied myself then while still having a teacher ... where would I be today?

Anyway, I'm showing all three versions - inspiration, ink, and color to show that (1) I have come a long way, and (2) I still have a way to go. The biggest issue is the following - the body seems proportionately correct, but the head is elongated. This makes him look taller versus the squatter dwarf that Frank Frazetta painted. The truth that this points out based on how I did the drawing ... is that what I see, how I interpret shapes and sizes, and how my mind translates art is incongruous. This is why practice is important because it overcomes our internal bias so that we can accurately reproduce what we see without needing to extensive tracing, grid work, overlay, etc. (Also, will need to probably do additional grid work to further insure proportions).

As a side note, in Photoshop, I could compress the image and make the drawing of the dwarf more similar to the painting. This shows that those who draw on Photoshop are given more flexibility to error as the correction is easier versus those who apply ink to paper.

In the end, I am pleased with my progress, and will continue to "study" but will need to speed it up to be able to truly step away from reproducing artists' art and finding my original expression as it concerns drawing.

To quote Mortal Kombat, "Test your might!" ... I felt that I did, but I got knocked out after round 3 by Sonya. So I'm a light-weight, but slowly improving.