Sketch Diary: Inked armored dude

A quick ink practice. Trying to work on those pen skills.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay - Cup o' mermaid

Look in the upper right hand corner - you'll see my tiny quick sketch to figure out placement. I knew what I wanted but not exactly how to fit it on the page. I highly recommend doing those little mock sketches whenever you have a complicated or different kind of drawing that maybe you're not super comfortable with placement/values/colors. Should've gone a little smaller with the actual drawing. Still cute.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay - who me? mermaid

That curled up tail look is one of my fav ways to draw mermaids.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: The worst 1 point perspective

I love watching live drawings with artists that have mastered different points of perspective. It's like magic. Watching me draw different perspectives... is like herding cats. Things go everywhere and nowhere. Won't stop me from trying. Here kitty kitty.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Mermay project with ribbon eel tail

So I'm doing a Mermay project with some peeps and these are some rough ideas for it. Mermay is a challenge for May where you're supposed to draw something mermaid related everyday in May. I don't have the time for that at the moment but I still wanted to do my own challenge. I decided to do a ribbon eel tail on my mermaid. And they can change male to female if needed so I wanted the mermaid to be androgynous looking. I'm interested to see how it turns out.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Wide-eyed girl in profile

Sketched this during a Yuri on Ice panel at Zenkaikon 2018. Some good programming this year.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Chillin' at Zenkaikon portrait of a girl

I sketched this while hanging out at the voice actors panel at Zenkaikon 2018. It was good times. Lots of good chats with other artists and other convention directors.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Climbing girl

Conveniently, the sketch pad this is on was too small to fit the hands and feet heh.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Relaxed mohawk portrait

I might have been sleepy when I sketched this hah.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Hey boi - portrait practice

A quicky from my mini sketch pad that I usually keep by my desk. I think he's cuh-uute.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Planning fan art ideas - Howl's

I have a tough time doing fan art of any kind. It's tough for me to borrow someone else's ideas like that. But I see the value in it, for my own growth, for showing my love of other artists characters and to draw people in to also check out my originals. So I'm working on some fan art projects like this one for Howl's Moving Castle. I think I could make most of them work except the bottom right is too similar to a still shot from the movie, though it is a beautiful scene. I'll probably do another set of these to flush out an idea. I want to do my own thing while paying tribute to characters I love and the creators that made them. I'll let you know how that turns out hah.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Cuddle birds

Birds are difficult for me so I used a reference for this drawing. I like how cute and snuggly they look together.

I have one night a week where I'm working on digital drawing (using my wacom) and I want to build myself a schedule of doing drawings like this, from reference, one night. Maybe another night I do freehand ink, another iterative style practice. It's difficult to keep up with drawing, nevermind trying to take it to the next level, while working full-time (let's be real, it's more like 50+hrs a week). But I think making incremental change is the way to go. And I do best with realistic schedules.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Gesture with staff warmup

This was supposed to be a warm up page of gesture drawings but I started fiddling with it too much. Wasn't a solid gesture to begin with so I'm not surprised it came out weird. Looks like something I drew 10 years ago lol.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 26 - Freehand ink of Aragon

I love watching movies with great scores in the background while I draw and The Lord of the Rings always fits the bill for me. This was a freehand (no pre sketch in pencil or anything) drawing in ink using a brush pen of Aragon. It's a bit wonky lol and I didn't feel like inking in all of his hair... still fun though.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Lips iterative practice

This was a good challenge and I ended up needing to look at references for ideas on some of them. That first one, top left, is definitely my go to look. But I'm a big fan of the middle one, second row, and of the bottom left one, last row.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) study

A quick study using real pencils for once. 2H, HB, and 2B thought you never can see the 2H in a scanned image. In case I missed some key details, this is supposed to be a study of Charlie Hunnam as the character Raleigh from Pacific Rim.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Kaiju Knifehead study

I wonder what movie I was watching while drawing this... hmmm. Yeah this is a study of one of the Kaiju from Pacific Rim called Knifehead. The sequel to this film is coming out soon so if you haven't seen the first one, get to it! Giant monster fights are the best fights.

Hot damn I love drawing creepy looking monster mouths. Is that a thing? I think it's a thing.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 25 - Death fanart

Freehand ink brush pen of Death from Sandman by Neil Gaiman. I was looking at images of both death and the woman that Gaiman says Death was based on - Cinnamon. I changed the gaze and orientation of the face a bit from the references. Being done freehand, I was just running with the mistakes hah. I love how it turned out though. One of my favorite characters. A great comic - check it out if you haven't.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 24 - Ergo Proxy fanart

A freehand brush pen drawing of a character from an anime I love - Ergo Proxy. Yeah I know, the face is wonky. Whatever. I still like it. Freehand is hard.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Hand in motion

The idea here is kind of movement of the hand. I might make a gif out of it later. Might need some more drawings in between, I don't think 8 is enough to make the animation smooth. It's funny tho... when I first drew these, I thought they didn't look ANYTHING like my hand... now I'm pretty proud of myself hah. The best kind of drawing - the roller coaster of emotion.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Bunch of heads

Face, face, who's gotta face! Just some iterative drawing practice. Same girl, 9 different faces. I think my fav is...bottom row, middle.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 23 - Pink cloudy hair

Another quick ink drawing, freehand (no sketching in pencil). And the pink is ink as well, not watercolor. I like how it turned out. Twas fun.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 22 - Whispy hair and purple lips

So I've been watching a lot of Artwork by Christopher Cayco videos lately so I've been all about the freehand brush pen drawings. Be sure to check out his live drawings at least. It's like watching a wizard do magic on paper, to me anyway hah.

How it works is you need some kind of ink and brush - brush pens are definitely easier than using raw ink and brushes. Or at least cleaner and takes up less space. Cuz for raw ink you need the ink well, some kind of palette, some kind of towel, glass of water, brushes, and heavy duty paper. Anyway, you have your brush and ink and then you just draw! No pre-sketching in pencil. Just brush to paper and go. I haven't drawn in straight ink like that in ages and it was so freeing and fun and I felt like my wrist was opening up more. Super nice. Highly recommended.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Perspective work is hard

So this was supposed to be a top down type of perspective drawing. But I didn't build a grid well for the head so it doesn't quite work.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Sitting on a floating square

Just a quick in my small sketch pad that I keep on my desk. I'm trying to work on perspectives more but it's really hard for me. My drawings are usually very flat, I think.

with love - m

Sketch Diary: Sitting on a ledge in color

Played with colors here. I like the skin. Fabric looks ok from a distance but I didn't get the smoothness like I wanted. Hair just fell flat. I don't have many purples. This was on thin paper so I couldn't rework the colors or overlay much at all without ruining the paper. Ah well. Still fun.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 21 - doing the up-do

Another quick inked drawing. I wasn't thrilled with the original pencil sketch but I like this inked version a bit more.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober 20 - Slender all over

Ain't she cute?! I don't usually draw thin styles like this but it was really fun to try. I hope to keep trying more varied shapes of people.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober 19 - 'the page is too small' portrait inked

Quick inked sketch using a new brushpen. Gotta use it on bigger paper. I don't have the brush control for those tiny skinny lines yet.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inktober Day 18 - Birdperson inspired inked

Ooooo isn't he just the hunkiest. I'm not sure why but I love how this turned out. For a goof around sketch, I'm pleased as punch.

with love - M