Drawing is hard!

It's also been a little quiet from me lately, so I wanted to give everyone an update as to how things are going. Tutorial, homework review and process video is still coming along, and I'm still working on new art as always!

I also wanted to show you guys a batch of drawings that made it pretty far down the pipeline, but had to ultimately give up on. My instincts tell me I just don't have the skill level to properly complete them yet.

I thought this was a good chance to share an example of how things can be difficult sometimes, as I've received many messages over the years from new artists mentioning how they feel really down when things aren't going smoothly. Don't worry, you aren't alone!

Just to go through each of them and why I think they don't work:

Red sword : The angle and the pose doesn't quite mesh well enough as I hoped - it feels like it's in an awkward spot where the foreshortening effect detracts from the character rather than add to it. Full body foreshortening has always been a weakness of mine, and this process really gave me insight as to how important actually researching the exact pose is! The character's head pose and sword hand is also in an awkward spot - that I'm finding really hard to fix. Overall I'm also finding it hard to inject a story element into this one.

Waist lantern: I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to imply movement with the limited crop - i.e. make the character look like she's on a hike across a fantasy landscape, while maintaining the pose as much as possible. (With last month's knight piece, I was able to use the leg position to imply stairs easily, but I vehemently refuse to reuse that). The awkward flow of the clothing in the wind, plus the pose makes it really hard to find a combination that works. I really like some things that I've developed here, mainly the morning light, but overall things just can't quite come together well enough.

Knight: I embarked on creating this pose of the character pushing through strong wind with an injured arm, but couldn't find any references that matched what I wanted (but went ahead anyway). It's only after hours of trying to make it work, that I mimicked the pose myself and realized it REALLY doesn't work... To be precise, it's way more natural to push into the wind with your leading arm and hand, while the trailing arm would be in the resting pose. And if you really try to force the trailing side to be the arm that shields your face in the pose I drew, you end up just awkwardly wrapping your arm across your neck (try it). And while I avoided that here, it just makes the pose look wrong as a result. A big lesson learnt. This one might be salvageable though, if I return the torso to a front facing position.

Hopefully this wasn't too out of the blue, and perhaps even a bit of a fun read for you! See you very soon for the process video and homework review!