While I haven’t been doing my weekly art practice while on vacation, there has still been a lot of projects on the go as well as our 1 year anniversary of Altar Stone.

I haven’t posted all of the art I’ve done for Altar Stone as it’s split between multiple iPads and computers at this point. But the anniversary feels like a good time to put in the effort to gather them into a post.

It was also Drawclass week last week so I’ll share my progress of trying to follow along to portrait painting.

This week is another fictional creature week. Started off pretty rough but came up with a good practice approach for a creature that doesn’t exist.

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination​

Day 1 was rough. I’m not really sure if I should put more time into the day one task as it doesn’t feel like I’m set up to learn anything yet. But it makes the jump in progress also feel a little fake as I know I can do better than what I draw on day 1 sometimes.

When I added this theme to my list, I didn’t realise it was going to coincide with the olympics. Thought there would be some good photography of bodies in motion with gymnasts as a theme. I hadn’t meant to be so narrow but ended up only using references of people on the bars. Then when I got deeper into it I thought there would be some more unique poses, but people seem to love the shot of a person looking long.

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination​

When I started the week I thought I’d find more references where people would be simply hanging from the bar. Maybe warming up? Well I saw none.

This week was a return to creatures, with the common house sparrow as our subject. I also attended an animation course last weekend so I’ll share some stuff from that, and I’ve been working on a new Altar Stone video which was more technically demanding than art demanding for the last few weeks.

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination​

While I chose sparrows to continue on the most common animals in Montreal, it turns out I can only imagine them as basic small birds when not using a reference.

I’m a blog post behind in WAPs so I'm going to cover the last two weeks in one.

The first week was an attempt at drawing myself. I’ve wanted a self drawn avatar to use online my whole online life but I’ve never managed to draw one I’m happy enough with. And spoiler I still haven’t.

The week after was skulls, which was a theme that was probably too broad. Lots of skull are very different from one another, so choosing something like Human Skulls probably would have given the week more focus.

Day 1 - Myself​

A few attempts at drawing myself without looking at myself.

Starting already a step behind one that I did earlier this year which I don't love.

I didn’t complete my WAP exercises last week. It’s my first time not getting through all 5 exercises but it was an anatomy week which often feel a little weird on the last two days. I hadn’t even found any stylistic waltz references to use for day 4.

But it’s not a lack of references that kept me away. I had a piece that, initially, was going to be rather simple but had turned into one of my most ambitious pieces yet (will share progress later in this post). One of the reasons I have such a structured practice schedule is that I haven’t had many ideas for projects and these focused weeks help me to keep practising and creating even when my head is empty. So the idea that I’m so taken with a new piece feels like my creativity is starting to stir again (it only took 1.5 years). So I’m pretty happy to put weekly practice to the side if it means completing a full piece that I’m excited about.

Besides the new piece getting most of my creative attention, I’ve been dealing with some pretty back upper back/neck pain. So while I want to spend multiple hours a day working on art I’m having to take many breaks and also just limit the amount of time I spend with my head bent in hopes of not making the pain worse. And don’t even get me started on how the current heat wave is completely sapping all my energy.

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination​

One of the reasons I chose waltz as a reference is that it’s a fairly structured dance, almost stiff as dances go. But I also wanted to get into practising pieces with multiple characters where they are touching. Along with the challenge of having most of the pose hidden by a dress. Day 1 poses were rather simple from my brain.

Took a bit of an art break over the last two weeks while getting married. Still did some work on an Altar Stone animation and also drew my Elden Ring character as we’re deep into the DLC.

This week kicked off more focused practice time and I’m returning with: 1 - Focusing on a single piece for a week 2 - A childhood re-draw

Day 1 - Pose​

Here’s the original piece I started with.

I can’t remember any of the context for the design or composition. All I know is that this was done in pencil crayon and was likely one of my main pieces for art class when I was 17. So big into my Always Online internet years.

I’m following the workflow that was covered in the One Week Character program, so day 1 was mostly gathering reference, choosing a pose and getting the composition down.

This week I took a break from my usual practice schedule to participate in Paintables’s One Week Character class. The students were provided with briefs to choose from and then focus on trying to work with that brief while following David Belliveau’s workflow. He did live videos from Monday to Friday covering each stage of the process and answering questions.

It’s a good workflow overall, but I struggled to tune in to the sessions so did everything a day or two behind. There was a whole Discord community for it but I found it was too busy and messy, the way I often find Discord servers to be. But it was a good experience and it helped me stay focused on one piece for a whole week and be pretty happy with the end product.

This week's theme is chameleons, another creature I’ve always loved. But I can’t trace back my memory to any particular stand out chameleons. Not in tv, movies or books. They’ve always been weird little guys, between the colour changing, the long tongue. Maybe that’s enough to make them memorable to a kid.

This week is another one pulled from old childhood art, another book cover I made featuring a crying sea turtle. I loved turtles a lot when I was a kid. Franklin was my favourite toy, I had almost every book, even dressed as Franklin for Halloween once. These turtles are not Franklin turtles though, this week is sea turtles only.