Weekly Art Practice - Week 22 & 23
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.
Day 2 - Myself - Research
For day two I pulled up some general character art to try out some different styles of drawing faces. This turned out to be more difficult than I expected as it’s not easy to just get a list of different looks so there was a lot of Pinterest.
Day 3 - Myself - Reference studies
On day two I went through my phone and used old selfies as reference. I haven’t taken many selfies in the last few years, it’s a habit I’m gotten out of. Partially out of a desire to have fewer photos of myself online and just wanting to take photos of cats and squirrels instead.
Day 4 & 5 - Myself - Sketch progress
I took another stab at sketching myself after my girlfriend voted for bowl cut with bangs as the most Me looking, look. One of the hardest things about trying to cartoonify myself is that I don’t have a central feature to focus on. Hair is a big identifier for a cartoon and mine changes pretty drastically over 6 months, so even when I do have an avatar I like (Thanks Catarina @radiantlethe for previous avatars!) it’s outdated extremely quickly. These days I have 2-3 pairs of glasses that I swap between and are all pretty different. And my face is very… average. Which I mean more in like, my forehead size is very average, not distinguishable, same thing about my nose. My lips are a little different due to surgery but that’s not enough to make a face look like me. Square chin is maybe the strongest face shape feature that can be leaned on.
And then I took it digital. It’s shocking how quickly sketches go from looking okay to looking ridiculous.
Day 1 - Skulls
I thought I had a decent grasp on human skulls but putting pencil to paper really makes my brain want to stop imagining things clearly.
Day 2 - Skulls
Skulls were much easier with references but there are so many kinds and they’re all pretty interesting. There seems to be a lot of interest in cat skulls so those come up a lot.
Day 3 - Skulls
Drawing more detailed skulls was fairly relaxing. There’s a comfort in them being solid objects.
Day 4 - Skulls
Day 5 - Skulls
I get into a bit of a bird skull rut with the week. It felt easier than a lot of the other ones.
End of Sketchbook 1
Last year I bought a fresh sketchbook for carrying around, taking to the park and traveling and all that. This morning I used the last page! I picked this up while I was still trying to get into the swing of doing art more often. After a few years of barely drawing at all it felt like such a long shot to fill a new sketchbook.
I’m a notorious sticker hoarder so after getting this sketchbook I put every sticker I got across the course of the year on to it, which has made it into a nice little visual memory of a lot of activities.
Conclusion
So I had been hoping to end the week with a self portrait avatar I would use, but haven’t. Skulls went pretty okay. And I bought a new sketchbook so it kind of feels like starting a new chapter.
Pinterest board for skulls.