Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain

I first started the book and was instructed to do some pre-instruction drawings: a self portrait using a mirror, a portrait of someone I knew from memory (in this case my best friend) and a drawing of my hand, from observation.

As you can see below my self portrait is dire, the portrait of my friend is even worse, and the hand sketch isn't too bad. I think the hand sketch was better because I applied myself more to this drawing; I knew the portrait drawings would be bad anyway so I didn't bother with these too much.

Self portrait

Portrait of best friend

Hand drawing

After the hiatus; CTRL+ Paint, and Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards

About October 2014 I picked up a pencil again with a view to practise and improve on my art on a more regular basis.

I started with CTRL+ Paint, and got up to where many life studies are necessary, but I felt like I had to take a step backwards with my skills and brush up on the basics. After browsing a few forums Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards kept cropping up as a good beginners drawing book. So I promptly booked this book out of the library in October 2014, and finished it on 2nd January 2015.

At first I thought the techniques were a bit pointless, such as pure contour drawing, but as I progressed through the book I realised the techniques came in handy. I particularly liked the learning to draw with light and shadows, and drawing with negative spaces.

Over the coming weeks I'll share with you my drawings first from CTRL+ paint, then from the Betty Edwards book. You'll see by the end of the book just how much I've improved, though I still have much to learn.

CTRL+ Paint - Practising drawing simple forms in different angles

CTRL+ Paint - Drawing using just the outer edged of a form

CTRL+ Paint - More drawing outer edges of forms

CTRL+ Paint - Practising blocking out shapes to help with drawing more complex forms

Improving

Over time I have learnt more in my drawings, but not developed any sense of style yet. I feel I still need to improve my foundations of drawing before finding my own style.

The below are a random assortment of what I consider my better drawings, they are not necessarily newer than the ones in my previous posts, but I have spent more time and effort on them.

This brings me up to about summer time this year, from about summer was when I started on CTRL Paint, and I think I got the Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain in the autumn. Future posts will include drawings from both of these schools of learning.

So this is where my actual journey with this blog begins, I hope you'll join me for the ride!

Garnet from Final Fantasy 9. One of the pivotal scenes

 

Spongebob Squarepants. This was a challenge to mix something up. I'm a big kid and love this cartoon, so I loved drawing it too! Can anyone spot the mistake I made?

 

Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. This was drawn with chalks (just testing the chalks to see how I got on with them). On the original I spilt my beer on it (lesson learned - don't drink and draw!), but it was a blessing in disguise. I had to start from scratch, but on the original the head was too small.

Daily & weekend sketch challenges

In a bid to improve my drawing I joined the DSC on DeviantArt, or Daily Sketch Challenge group. I'm not entirely sure the challenges helped; it certainly installed discipline to draw every day, but due to lack of knowledge of the fundamentals of art, and the mostly obscure references the group picked for their daily topics I eventually lost interest. I usually enjoyed the Weekend Sketches more, as you were usually allowed more time to work on your sketch.

In the end I only did the drawings of which I had knowledge about, but during the later half of 2014 I all but stopped going on DeviantArt. I still check in from time to time to see if there's anything challenges I feel up to doing, but I get bored of drawing some super hero I've never heard of.

I've since found other inspirations for drawing on a daily basis. Please see my DSC's below and enjoy!

Weekend Sketch Challenge - George Harrison. I decided to keep the rendering simple on this, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out

Weekend Sketch Challenge - Jason Voorhees



Weekend Sketch Challenge - Kaa. I loved drawing this one, as soon as I knew it was Kaa I'd already thought of this composition, and as one commented put on DeviantArt, "that sly snake!".

Daily Sketch Challenge - Lock, Stock and Barrel from The Nightmare Before Christmas, one of my favourite childhood films

Weekend Sketch Challenge - Marilyn Monroe. This was my first ever WSC, and although I'm not happy with how I portrayed the folds in the dress I hugely enjoyed working on this WSC

Weekend Sketch Challenge - card for Mars Attacks

Weekend Sketch Challenge - Princess Leia

Daily Sketch Challenge - Ren and Stimpy. They used to show this adult cartoon when I was a kid, eating my dinner after finishing school!

Daily Sketch Challenge - Super Mario

Daily Sketch Challenge - Too Much Coffee Man. My first ever DSC!

Weekend Sketch Challenge - The Torch of Liberty. Notice how I struggled with the human form

Early drawings

Well... wow, I knew when I drew these at the time they were not great, and looking back at them now I can really see where I was going wrong.

I've still got a ton to learn, but I'm now practising every day and already seeing improvement.

Please don't laugh too much at these :)

Over the coming weeks I'll post more of my old stuff, then from my learning with Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards, and CTRL paint I'll have some newer (and hopefully better!) stuff to showcase.



Master Chief from Halo. This was a Daily Sketch Challenge on DeviantArt, whereby you only have 30 minutes to draw a topic of the day 

 


This was a play with colours and rendering, the idea to do all of the star signs, however I only did aries

 


As you can see I was heavily influenced by anime, something I'm now trying to break away from!

 

More anime inspiration, this was a 'misplaced' challenge on DeviantArt

 


My first Original Character

 


First ever drawing on a graphics tablet! It wasn't a good tablet, notice the shaky lines, although this was only a quick 2 minute drawing



Starting again from scratch

So, this is my first blog post, which is hopefully the first of many, documenting my journey as an artist and finding my artistic voice.

After feeling generally frustrated with life, I realised after nearly 10 years of leaving school I did nothing creative with my life. Being creative is an excellent way of giving myself ‘me’ time, and I had missed this. During my teenage years I was heavily influenced by manga & anime, and mostly spent my time working on OC’s and drawing my friends. Once I left school this pretty much died a death, and other thing became more important in my life: boyfriends, alcohol, video games, working to earn money, and travelling.

A couple of years ago I picked up a pencil again, but I had no creative direction, so I just drew whatever came to mind. My drawings were atrocious. No sense of scale, composition, or any other fundamentals that help make up art, at least not in the semi-realism I was aiming for.

So that I didn’t waste my money too much I bought a cheap drawing tablet to see how I got on with it. Aside from finding it exceptionally frustrating due to it’s cheapness and not working very well I found I quite liked drawing straight onto my computer screen, and promptly upgraded to a Wacom Bamboo.

Then come a couple more years of stalling, mostly due to more holidays, and then moving house 3 times in 18 months. I did pump out a few drawings and sketches, but nothing I was particularly proud of. I am my own worst critic. I will post the ones I find half decent.

To help me get back on track I was going through the CTRL Paint videos, but I felt like I reached a point I could go no further before going over the basics of drawing again.

Currently I am working on Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards. I find the book easy to follow, but don’t agree with all of her techniques. I’m more than halfway through the book, and my next assignment is to draw a portrait, which I am cacking myself over! Overall I’ve been pleased with my results from this book, in particular how to draw in perspective.

I’m not too sure what I’ll do after finishing the above book, I will probably go back to CTRL Paint and carry on from where I left off. For Xmas I’l be receiving an Asus Vivotab Note 8, which is like a very cheap version of the Companion Cintiq, or the Surface Pro 3. I’ve had a quick play with it before it was wrapped away for Xmas, hopefully I’ll get on with it OK for the sketches and drawings I want to do on it.

I’m also thinking of taking a home-learning university course in Fine Art. I’m stuck in a dead-end job, which despite future prospects has yielded nothing for 3 years yet, and I’m getting itchy feet. All other jobs I look at for graphics design, or artworking, or even just repro-ing require a degree, and I feel like I won’t be taken seriously in the industry unless I have a degree. I know that a strong portfolio counts (something which I’m working on), but what’s the point if my job application gets thrown straight in the bin if I don’t have a university degree?

Anyway, that’s enough from me for now, in the meantime I hope you enjoy my other ramblings, and the sketches I will post on here! Please feel free to constructively feed back on anything I post.