#skullguy

Thats me.

Old Art Upload: The Skullguy Saga Part 5

Here is the first traced image I had ever done. I did the whole thing in MS Paint, as usual, but only started saving the files seperately a ways through the project.

You can see how I started with the traced suit and pose to get the proportions and angle right, yet the head, dragon, and background are all done freehand. If it had not been for the work on shading that I did with the trace (in the actual picture the suit was dark blue, so I improvised), I never would have been able to figure out the shading for the lil dragon.

Honestly, I think the traced part looks neat, but I’m most proud of Prometheus in this drawing; I don’t know if I had ever tried to draw a dragon like that before, outside of maybe pencil and crayon as a young Tolkien fan. In any case, I think it’s equal parts cute and fierce! Heh heh.

This is an example of a drawing I did first with outlines and then erasing them. To this day I will do the same thing in my drawings. I have to put the outlines down in order to fix in my mind what I’m trying to draw before I can erase them and let the colors overlap.

The face in this drawing is terrible, but I almost don’t notice it because of how much detail I put into every unimportant thing. The painting on the wall probably took half as long as the rest of the drawing, and the stems on the cat tails were painted with care.

This drawing taught me that even without any skill what-so-ever, if I keep adding more and more and more and more detail, eventually it will start to turn into something I enjoy. And ultimately if I enjoy making a drawing, I will enjoy the end product.

This final drawing is a culmination of everything I had learned from the freehand style and the tracings. This was done after I had done multiple traced drawings. The concern was that I had, indeed, become too reliant on tracing and I had neglected to improve my ability to draw in any other way.

So for this drawing I attempted to do, without any reference, without any tracing, without any tools, to just do one highly-detailed, highly-shaded, drawing at a difficult angle in a manner I had never done before.

Drawing one of my old "Skullguy" characters that I hadn't drawn for a while.

Old Art Upload: The Skullguy Saga - Epilogue

So I don’t draw in MS Paint anymore, at least not significantly. I no longer have a job where I am limited to that medium, so I usually just use it for quick edits to cut and paste things together. With that being said, what happened to my mainstay for MS Paint art? Is it the end of Skullguy?

...Well...

It’s complicated.

There are so many memories tied to this character and the people who helped me to develop it, it’s sad to leave it behind... but life goes on, and the reasons I had for drawing the character have kind of gone by the wayside as well in the past few years. I’ve started to move on to new characters, to new mediums and new illustration styles. That being said, I will admit that there are times in class or at work where the Skullguy makes an appearance in a doodle.

I might be trying to come up with a new character and use him as a stand-in default. Or I might just be doodling at random.

Trying to figure out a style of outfit or a certain look. Maybe I’m drawing with a friend and want to include them in the character style.

Or add my character to their art.

Maybe I’m trying out a new drawing program and want to test it out with something familiar.

Or maybe there are events in life that inspire me to bring it back to represent what I feel. Like Love.

Or family.

But at the end of the day, Skullguy is just a drawing, just a character. When I look back at the drawings, I can remember what was going on in my life at the time. It wasn’t always good, sometimes it hurts to remember, and sometimes it takes me back to a place I had forgotten about.