Drawing Practice (Patreon)

Hey buds!

For the past couple of weeks, I haven't been feeling very confident about the comics I've been drafting. So to distract myself in a fruitful way, I've been doing a lot of gesture drawing–which is an exercise meant to capture form and movement within a restricted period of time. I never went to art school, so even basic exercises can be new and revealing experiences for me! I've been really enjoying it and I think it's helping me get through my little comic block. I thought I could share with you some of what I've been doing because it was fun! 

I also wanted to share a frustrating side of being a career artist: Sometimes, it just doesn't happen. I wish I was a more prolific cartoonist, and I'm starting to think that in order to get there I need to take these educational breaks occasionally. 

I have lots of thoughts about this! If you ever have any questions about art (theory, practice, careers, whatever!), please don't hesitate to ask me in the comments or direct messages!

On to some sketches!

Here are just a few pages of the several dozen I've drawn over the past two weeks. I spent between 1 and 10 minutes on each figure. If you'd like to try for yourself, I found these great videos which you can see here.

I don't draw many people typically, so this was felt very fresh for me!

On the right are some other drawing exercises I think I will try to work into my routine.

I tried the same exercise with photos of birds from the internet but found them quite stiff!

So I started drawing from my own reference pictures (like this grackle), focusing on the expressions.

I then drew a lot of flying crows because birds have much more elegant and interesting movement in flight.

Finally, I started drawing crows in colour, which makes for more interesting artwork in the end!

I like the effect of layering using different colours.

The crew is here.

Pretty bird.

I will be posting some new comics for you in the next couple of days! 

- Joshua