Weekly Art Practice - Week 7
This week we’re back in my comfort zone; drawing creatures.
Day 1 - Drawing from imagination
Day 1 felt decently smooth. Rabbit’s aren’t the most complicated creatures and I feel like I see them in images on a regular basis (unlike pangolins).
Day 2 - Figure sketching
I feel like I keep giving myself more and more time for the day 2 practice but I really need to start forcing myself to limit how much time I spend on each sketch. It’s just nice to stare at cute bunnies.
Day 3 - Reference studies
Day 3 spent analysing the inner bean shape of rabbits, smaller chest area, larger hide quarters and face slightly similar to a squirrel but like a soft sided triangle. A decent amount of squirrel similarities really. But rounder.
Day 4 - Style studies
My favourite day! There is so much rabbit art out there. And so much from Japan and Korean with such cute simple styles. Overall I worry that the styles I chose were a little too simple as Pinterest was pretty full of this kind of thing.
I found one batch that has a more Disney-type look to it. More details, more kind of human expressions on them. But with some really fun proportion play with feet and ears.
Reference: By Andrew Wamboldt
These little guys are very good and I was intrigued by the broken line art style. Where you leave gaps in the lineart to convey the fuzzy or fluffiness. I never try this myself as I worry I don’t have the knowledge to know when to break it up and when not too but after staring at these I don’t think there’s a solid rule to it. So maybe something I can incorporate into other creature drawings.
Reference: @yura_inaho on Twitter
These guys were probably my favourites for their mix of simplicity and identifying characteristics. 12 different types of buns, most of them being visually unique. A big thing for rabbits seems to be mixing up the line work to show different fur types, from the very shaggy to the shorter haired guys.
Refernce: @taiga15 on Twitter
The simplest style of all. Very minimal detail, but still very much rabbits based on their small limbs.
Reference: Snowysaur on Tumblr
Day 5 - Drawing from imagination
I put a non drawing day between day 4 and 5 this week. I’m still not sure if this is better for absorbing lessons or not. I did feel a little creatively stuck when I started, thinking directly of the images I had sketched just days before. While rabbits are nice to look at and all, I felt like I had limited pose material to choose from. I think what I really need to start pushing myself to do is to change my perspective on creatures, move the camera up and down, and have more angles. Just to keep things interesting and see if I understand the shapes from all sides.
Conclusion
While I appreciated returning to a nice easy creature week, I don’t feel as confident about my takeaways due to rabbits being mostly fur. They are another creature that I feel like I should take some time looking at skeletal references to understand what’s going on under all the fluff. Instead of just drawing shapes that imply a rabbit underneath.
I’m making some edits to my subjects for the next few weeks as I’m considering participating in NaNoRenO. A yearly game jam where you try to make a visual novel in the software Ren’py within the month of March. I had already started brainstorming a text based game a few weeks before a friend mentioned the game jam to me. And now it feels like kind of perfect timing. Creatively if not great life timing.
You are allowed to create any art assets before March 1st but I know my landscape skills are rusty from last year's lesson on them, so next week I’ll try to do a week of landscape / coastal vistas while trying to figure out an art style that will work for very quick asset creation in March.