Weekly Art Practice - Week 36

I can’t believe I waited this long to do bats as a WAP theme. They’re an original favourite animal from my childhood, to the point that a book about different types of bats is one of my strongest childhood memories. However, the kids book Stellaluna may be the reason for my love of them:

Day 1 - Drawing from imagination

Day 1 not too bad but I was probably picturing how dragons fly instead of bats. There is definitely more variety to bat faces than I could remember and I think my mental model of a bat has been fairly corrupted by cartoon versions.

Day 2 - Figure sketching

A little more variety, a better angle on the wings. Really seeing how boney bat wings are.

Day 3 - Reference studies

While bats are more known for flying, drawing them crawling on the ground is much easier. Perspective gets weird when creatures are flying, wings bend or get foreshortened. It’s hard to convey movement, especially with bats since they’re moving so fast.

Day 4 - Style studies

All cartoon bats are so cute, it was very difficult to choose reference pieces for today.

Reference: Instagram bats by sarah.b.artist

Reference: Vampire bats by sharkie19

Reference: Bat rogue by Artcher. I love this art piece so much T_T Very much an art style that I’d love to build a comfort with but I struggle to pull out such levels of cuteness.

Day 5 - Drawing from imagination

This one feels a little fumbled, but probably because I was fighting the urge to draw cute bats and I really just should have let myself draw cute bats. Instead you get Smokey, Tokey, and Ralph, as named by my wife.

Conclusion

WAP 37 is already in the works and I’m tempted to push through to wrap up the year with WAP 40 but I also have a few other art projects I’d like to wrap up before the end of the year. I do have some time off coming up so I might be able to power through them with that extra time. If I don’t spend it making tofu pies.

Pinterest board of bats.