Weekly Art Practice - Week 26

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.

Day 2 - Figure sketching

Day 2 was good, used some of my favourite images I had found as reference for some quick sketches. I love the little cat-peregrine.

Day 3 - Reference studies

Reference studies went okay, went with some more traditional griffins. A mediaeval emblem type and a simple modern adaptation.

Reference: Someone’s cute old-web site about mythical creatures.

Reference: Griffin by Cole Marchetti

Day 4 - Style studies

Instead of style studies for day 4 I return to the practice of “drawing from life” by choosing one bird reference and one lion reference. The exercise being I need to merge them together myself but would have realistic portions for each half.

This was my favourite day as it felt like the “right” approach. I wish I had thought of it sooner and I would have just done different combos every day cause I like seeing different bird types of griffins.

Day 5 - Drawing from imagination

Drawing from imagination felt a little rough. I wanted to try a more dramatic flying pose but that ended up being a bit more perspective work than I was prepared to do. For the second one I wanted to try to capture cute cat + bird but without a reference for either it feels messy.

Conclusion

I’d like to spend another week with griffins as they’re one of my favourite mythological creatures. Maybe I’ll return to them later this year. But next up is some travel time so I’m going to take a week or two off of focused practice and just doodle for the next week or so.

Pinterest board of griffins.