Sssteph...

11-30-2011. I love this one, but I don't love this one. I don't because it doesn't look "exactly" like her, but I do because it's a bit of a caricature of her, exaggerating parts. Probably the best thing is the fun I had, again, with the lines. And yup, I'm going to say it again... that's the whole idea of this, right? It was fun.) :-D

Mark

(11-29-2011. Sometimes you try hard to find something there in the person or photo or whatever to give you a clue of how to draw it. I think I've become a firm believer in the "there's no exact drawing style for everything" school of sketching that may well be or I just made it up... anyway, there are some that you just start. You shut down your brain and let go. I'd pretty much put that akin to that first step as you go skydiving... there's nothing between you and the ground, you're not sure if it's going to work out or not, but you've got zero control over the outcome. And it's a rush. And you sit there and watch it happening and think "wow, that's cool. I like THAT line." and so on. My absolute favorite moments in time. This was one of them. No thinkie, just draw. Heck, don't even focus on the paper.)  :)

Mika

(11-28-2011, Mika's a gent from my art group, and I have to apologize to him ahead of time, since his eyes seem to be a bit more narrow set in the sketch than on him. Hm. I was once again going for less is more in the shading department. And line thickness... which I didn't do tooooo bad on...) :)

Congratulations, Thom, I just saw that you were my 300th post.

(11-27-2011. Well, you weren't actually my 300th sketch, since I'd added a few together at the beginning and when Google thought I was spam and cut me off for almost a week. But it does sound nice and round, huh?  Thom is an old friend from college. Actor Extraordinaire, I looked for the perfect photo of him to sketch, and out of all his great headshots etc, I couldn't resist this one of him goofing with his son. Now this shows fun. I skipped out on just about ALL shading, depending on my drying out pen with it's grainy to make a bit of lighter grey for shading, and turning it a bit to get a nice strong thick line for any defined lines.)

Kristin and a hug...

(11-26-2011. I went back a bit into shading...not too heavily, since that seems to make me wince once I'm done... but enough to make her and her baby boy not look flat. Interestingly, I realized it's been a while since I've done profile, and he was a bit difficult to do, since with children: A. they have really smooth skin and no wrinkles to anchor them and B. full profile and full straight ahead tend to flatten people out.  No dynamic movement. He sure is cute though.)  :-D

Karen and Nancy

(11-25-2011. I cheated. I'll readily admit. To sketch Karen and Nancy I pulled out my 11x14 inch sketch pad. I knew if I tried to do it in my 8x10 I'd never have had enough room for my favorite marker without making them smudges. I also admit I took my pencil and drew two ovals and a few lines to keep their eyes, noses, and mouths on the correct tangent, since drawing things on an angle seems to be a weak spot of mine. I wind up making them off. But you know what they say...practice practice practice. I took a photo of this to upload to my blog, but decided that there was something sorta flat about Nancy... she needed some shading to make her more three dimensional, but I didn't want to do a really heavy shading. So I compromised. I think it's not too bad...) :)

Heidi...

(11-24-2011. My friend Heidi came up with a great idea. She would draw me and I'd draw her. She's spending a busy Thanksgiving, I'm thinking, with family [although I did see mine partially done]. Here's mine. She looked so happy with her baby daughter on her...)  :)

Valeria

(11-23-2011...Yah, Poor Valeria...I tried to make her a bit smaller to get her hair in -she really DOES have great hair- and my thicker pen didn't like smaller too much. I wound up making her eyes a tad too close....*sigh*. on the other hand, I DID have fun with the shading. I may have to revisit...)

David

(11-22-2011...Another WAN friend who so graciously let me use him for practice. I love drawing beards. Did I happen to mention that? I used to not like it at all, but I'll be darned if I'm seriously enjoying it...) :-D

Jay n' Max

(11-21-2011. This is my Unca Jay. And his best bud, Max. A bit of a challenge, since this one was a figure and not just a head. But good practice, since I get so excited drawing faces, and practice on every aspect of a body...including canine... is a good idea.)  :)

random guy at the coffee shop

(11-20-2011. I've been working on a project, so I decided to post this random guy I practiced on at the coffee shop.)

Kacy and Kitty...

(11-19-2011...Kacy let me sketch her. I had to sketch her with her kitteh. A twofer!) :-D

Em...

(11-18-2011. My friend Geri let me borrow her daughter's face. She mentioned school pics, and while I'm not totally opposed, there's just something about candid shots. Those tiny moments in life. I love looking at those, because THOSE are the ones that you can see a person's life in their eyes. You can read a story. This was from Halloween 2010, in her costume, with her mom. I got fun, excitement, love... yup. A great shot. It made my "quick sketch" very fun, and I just wanted to keep building it up a bit more...)

so....

I asked my friends if I could sketch them, and several said yes. Which I love. And is a bit scary. Since when you sketch someone you KNOW, it's supposed to LOOK like them, right? (And you want to be able to balance getting it to look or feel somewhat like them vs. keeping cool lines to keep it interesting and fun. Yeah. Well, sorry, Charles. I sorta bombed out tonight. The line weight isn't too bad, but it feels stilted. I even tried another one. Same thing. Stage fright? Possibly. Bad Drawing Day? Probably. I run through those some days, where you try and you try so hard and no matter how loose you want to try to get it, it just sucks. Usually I can loosen up through a gazillion attempted and aborted sketches, but since it's 11:41...I'm thinking that it's just time to go to bed and I'll loosen up more tomorrow and find my happy place. On an up note, it WAS fun to draw the shower cap...)  ;-)

oh, baby.

(11-16-2011. Better, with less shading. This child is actually much younger than appears in here. The problem when you elongate the skull a bit much and thin out the face. Now she looks more like an older toddler than a baby that's just becoming one....)

Random Writer

(11-15-2011. I ran out of people to stare at. For the moment. So I picked a random writer. Favorite part of this... the shading on the beard.) :-D

:)

(11-14-2011. Another smiler!  I love smiles.  :D )

Giving it another go...

(11-13-2011. Another try at a baby face... as one of my friends, Jean, mentioned: It's very hard to draw a baby and try to use shading. They're just too smooth. A few lines here and there, and that's about all...)

At the Coffee Shop...

(11-12-2011... Even when I sketch from photos, I do think it's definitely helping me with my live drawing...)

Happy Veterans Day

(11-11-2011. What ELSE was I going to draw?  Go hug someone who protected you. And say thanks.)

You win some....

(11-10-2011...you lose some. So here's the scoop today. My friend Dani let me borrow her children to sketch. I should have probably gotten a larger piece of paper, because using my sketching pens in a smallish sketchbook and trying to do two heads... I can't get as much detail as I want in without it getting all smudged up. Add to that the fact that I'm just kinda blah about the baby...who was supposed to be leaning forward, but...and I can blame the pens all I want, but it all falls back on me screwing up some perspective... and he no longer looks like he's leaning forward, which was the amusing part of the whole thing...trying to get away from big brother.  Which I then tried to rectify with shading... yeh. Another mistake. :-D On the other hand, I'm pretty fond of big brother's coy look, and his hands. So it's not ALL bad. We live, we learn.)  ;-D

Average Joe...

(11-09-2011. Or not so average Average Joe. For John's Average Joe Challenge in AWBA. No "beautiful" people...)

There's something to say....

(11-08-2011 ...about talking to someone who has had more life experience than you. Or about drawing someone who has had more life experience than you. Every wrinkle has a story. <3)

smile

(11-07-2011. Dropped the shading this time, to see what it'd look like.  Not too bad, not too bad.) :)

Into the Coffeeshop Once More...

(11-06-2011. Not half bad for sketching out a live one... luckily he was engrossed in his laptop and not moving around a whole lot...) :-D

Skila.

(11-05-2011. Ray let me dive back into his photo album for another victim-uh-person to sketch... This is Skila. I took a bit of time this time on sketching then adding in some shading.)

At the Hair Place...

(11-04-2011. Out today to get a haircut I sat in the chair, waiting, for a good 30 minutes. Which didn't pass without me being productive. This young lady was on a poster staring at me from across the room. The real humans were blocked from view...)

Superman

(11-03-2011. This is Ray. Ray's my cousin and he absolutely LOVES Superman, Batman...all those guys. That's a pretty girly way to put it, but you get what I mean. I accidentally started his head a bit too high or you'd see the Superman logo on the hat. Sorry Ray. Oops.)

bobblehead

(11-02-2011. Yeah, absolutely not my best, but I said I'd post the bad with the good. This was a lady sitting in the coffee shop as I was waiting for something to eat. She wasn't a very smiley woman, sitting there by the window, but her head was bobbing and moving as she talked about a hundred miles an hour...)

Challenge: Squiggle

(11-01-2011. The squiggle challenge from AWBA was to have someone to draw a squiggle on the page and make something out of it. My friend Esther really got into the squiggle thing, so instead of trying to incorporate it into the lines of a sketch, I decided to sketch over it...which was a challenge in itself, as the lines made it difficult to focus on any lines I was laying down...and use her squiggle to add to it with color. I think I didn't do so bad...) ;-D