#100daysofheroesbyck

Hey ya’ll. This one took quite a while but I guess I’m satisfied with out it turned out for the most part. Of course there’s ALWAYS room for improvement!

Self-criticism notes:

1. I’m not sure I like the lineart in this one because in some parts it stands out too much. I feel like the hard yet sketchy lines don’t match the soft shading of everything else, especially apparent in her hair, the fur, and her nose. I would probably choose colors more similar to the coloring if I were to redo.

2. I should really reference and practice drawing gems/stones/diamonds/metallics. That necklace was tricky and I lazily got away with it because it was small. MAHBAD.

3. Dang lighting source is confusing. I should really make a decision where the light is coming from then learn how to portray that properly with values and shading. 

Coloring is difficult, guys.

Somebody send halp!

So, this was more involved than I wanted it to be. I guess I’m not at the level where I can quickly paint something to my liking yet (no matter how many artists’ instagram feeds I subscribe to). 

But I’m trucking along on #100daysofheroesbyck aka #the100dayproject that’s long overdue. I’m hoping to wrap it up this month but we’ll see how life goes. Just thought I’d share a little about my process. The step I don’t show here is the endless research of references and wikipedia reading I do about the characters. I tend to have a story in mind while sketching characters because I think it gives me a better idea of their expressions, their body language, etc. 

Things I know I need to work on:

1. Male anatomy (how to abs?)

2. Lighting and values

3. Metals and clothing texture

I planned on writing this thought-out and structured post on the struggle (it’s real) with my 100 Days of Heroes but if I don’t have time to finish my sketches then why would I magically have time to write a sensible post? I’m so silly.

Anyways the fact is that the drudgery of an office job got the best of me and I moped around the house after work instead of being productive. And the usual cycle of “Hey I think I’m actually improving LEGGO” and “I totally suck why even try” was getting stuck in the latter part. 

But I’m almost at the half-way mark, and then after than it will (hopefully?) be a downhill joy ride from there. Baby steps, fellas, baby steps. 

So I totally thought about just finishing out the 100 Day Project silently and not post any of my sketches but then I remembered the point of doing this project in the first place: community. I used to browse through the 100 Day Project hashtag on instagram and randomly leave encouraging comments on people’s posts because, community y’all. I was really hype on the togetherness of this project and I stuck with it for a while. But when my posts were averaging about 20 likes each I figured, Who cares? Maybe one comment if it was a good day. No one’s really buying into this and I don’t know really know of any friends who are into making stuff so no one to commiserate with. So why not just draw for myself? 

But during my short break I had four different people mention the project and how they looked forward to the next post. I know, I know, four is not even a nickel, but to someone who is broke on followers, four pennies can seem like a fortune (FOURTUNE? AM I PUNNY?) especially on those days you feel like you don’t have anything to sell.

Wow that metaphor went further than I wanted. Moooooooving a long! I want to finish this project. I am going to finish this project. I am going to draw 100 heroes within 100 days (give or take a couple). I’m not going to be happy with all my sketches, but out of 100 there might be some that are maybe decently okay. 

There will be some days where you will not like your drawings but you should still keep drawing daily.