Eagle

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Drew this picture with the help of the tutorial found on this site. It doesn’t look exactly like the picture, but I was using it as an exercise to get more accustomed to drawing eagles. My friend, Tiffany, wants me to possibly design her EGA (Marine) tattoo, and while the globe and anchor will be simpler to draw, I really want to KNOW how to draw an eagle before I start working on this tattoo. It will really be the first time I ever design a tattoo for someone, and I don’t even know if she will be using it, but I do know that she wanted help redesigning the look of the Marine tattoo. Either way, I’ve been wanting to practice with eagles for some time, now, and have done a few pictures of them in the past, but nothing very in-depth.

Alongside that, I am also trying to send her some drawings while she’s currently away at boot camp. I’e been so lazy with art lately, but maybe this goal will help me get more focused. I haven’t made a single ounce of improvement on my digital work because I haven’t even been trying that at all lately. I’ve been focusing more on my raw skills with a pencil, which I know will help me, but it’s time I start another picture. My main trouble with digital art is the texture of the “paper” that I’m working with, because a tablet is so….ahh I don’t know…slippery compared to a piece of paper, which has more friction and is simply easier to draw on.

Features! Realistic animal artists :3

I keep stumbling onto the pages of some really talented people. So, let me give some of these a bit more attention!

Just click on the pictures OR on the artist’s name to find their pages!

Deborah Simon

I really like how she incorporates the skeletal anatomy of animals into her pictures, it really adds a creepy but beautiful quality to her pictures!! Her approach has a lot of fantasy in it, which is my favorite style of art, though I still do love simple realistic art as well because it’s still incredible. Anyway, my favorite is her Striped Hyena Clan (and this is NOT ONLY because I LOVE hyenas…though that did play into it a bit )

Joni Johnson Godsy

Wow, I just recently discovered her art. Her paintings almost look like photographs. I think that she does something beautiful with her art; she captures something unique and majestic about each animal subject she draws, and not all artists (no matter how talented) can pull this off. An artist can draw a picture that looks almost exactly like a photograph, and yet they don’t capture that beauty, but Joni certainly does!

Sally Maxwell

She seems to have a kind of experimental though realistic style. She has some very detailed backgrounds, and there’s a lot of color in her pictures!

Feathers and Scales

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WAHHHH oh noes a giant lizard!!!!!!! o:

Haven’t uploaded a sketch in some time! Thought I’d do so. The middle bird’s wing…yeah I know….oh well ^.^

I love skink fingers. :3

Got lazy with the feathers and scales. But…both are much easier than fur!!

Barn owl refs found on google images, the skink is from a picture I found in one of the books in the National Geographic “My First Pocket Book” series: “Reptiles and Amphibians”.

SHADING!

I think I’ve made quite a bit of progress so far with shading/fur details on animals. What do ya think? Compare this older, elk pic: http://vulpinerogue.deviantart.com/art/ELK-3-156338088 with this tiger: http://vulpinerogue.deviantart.com/art/Tiger-practice-159468146

I think that before when I would shade and add detail, I made the picture dark way too fast. I need to gradually work in the darker tones, because there really aren’t going to be THAT many dark shadows on an elk, for instance, if it’s standing in the sun! In the picture I drew, it looks like the elk has tons of shadow on it, when really, it wouldn’t. I don’t know, I’ve just got a lot more to learn about fur and lighting and shadows. Hopefully SOON I will get to draw an animal that looks GOOD and isn’t referenced at all! It will take some time, especially since I keep jumping around. I think that’s one of my problems, too. Recently, I started learning to draw tigers, and then I wanted to draw wolves!

The Things They Tell You….

So a few days ago I made the ridiculous mistake of spilling water ALL OVER the keyboard on my MacBook. The major consequences of this so far were the inability to access the Internet (the Airport icon, when clicked, read “Airport card not available”) and NO use of my battery (there is a little X over the battery icon, and when I click it, it says “No battery available”). I went to :ahem: some store….which shall not be named….and spoke to the workers there, who are supposed to be experts on helping out with computers. I assumed it would be a quick fix, I guessed I would just need some sort of replacement airport card, and maybe a replacement battery. But instead, I was told that I would have to send my computer out through mail to some factory to get it “fixed”, which would end up costing $850! And they never even explained what needed to be done, simply that they couldn’t do it and no one could, besides these expensive non-existent people in some factory. So, instead of doing this, I decided I would just see how things turn out, despite the fact that several of the employees at that store insisted that “water damage ONLY gets worse” and that the state my computer was in was the best it could ever be, and that the damage would very soon get worse as time went by. I didn’t believe them, but hearing that same phrase over and over again was starting to upset me, so it was hard to feel upbeat when I left the store.

But here my computer is, several days after that depressing visit, and THE AIRPORT WORKS! Hopefully the Airport STAYS working, and I’m very hopeful that the battery will soon start working again, too. In the meantime, I’m browsing the web for help with my battery problem.

This is just a simple lesson: don’t believe EVERYTHING they tell you. No matter how experienced or knowledgeable they seem, they CAN be wrong.

This is not simply based off of my computer’s story, but also on MANY things that have happened in my life, including the time when I broke my finger, had it “treated” though unsuccessfully by an arrogant doctor, and it started to turn black and smelly, so I saw another doctor–who informed me that my finger was still broken and since it had been a week after it was “fixed”, my finger had begun to harbor a huge infection. The last doctor who worked on my finger told me that I would most likely never grow my fingernail back (and if such an “odd” thing were to happen, that my fingernail would be misshapen, incomplete, and ugly), and what bothered me the most: that I would never be able to use it to its full extent, for instance, it would never bend all the way. However, those doctors were wrong, wrong, WRONG, and my fingernail has grown back NORMALLY, and my finger is actually now more flexible than the majority of my other fingers.

The main thing that helped me overcome the things they said to me was the fact that I wouldn’t give up, and I didn’t believe what they had said about me. I knew that there HAD to be something I could do, and so I did it.

My anime crush

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Howl is one of my favorite characters, well, ever. Not only is he GORGEOUS, but he is also charismatic, fearless, has extraordinary abilities, and can transform into an awesome creature. He also has a wild, uncontrolled dark side that just adds to the depth and intrigue of his character. I’ve been meaning to draw him for a long, long time, and only now do I think my sketches come close to looking like him.

For those of you who have never heard of Howl, he’s from Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

In addition to that picture, there will probably be many more Howl sketches to come! (and original ones, whereas both of those drawings of Howl were referenced from screen shots!)

I’ve finally finished the Cuddles picture I was supposed to draw for my friend, Suzanna!

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One of my deviantart friends just came out with her first print! It’s a beautiful piece–it features a gorgeous tree drawn completely with her pen. I really love the style in which she drew it. I’ve featured it directly below. If you would like a closer look on the actual page where it is posted (and also if you are interested in buying a print of it), please take a look at her page!

Branching Inspiration by *NonaSilverStar on deviantART

Christmastime Never Leaves

These adorable little guys were gifts from one of my very good friends, Fiorella. She is a very talented artist, please check out her gallery!

Those guys are always sitting on my desk, even though it’s not Christmastime anymore. I had to reference them for this picture, of course, but it was actually really fun.

First real non-referenced picture of my little Australian Shepherd, Keira! And since I’m so secretive about my non-referenced animal pictures, I thought I might as well post this in my blog for the world to see just why that is.

Put on Hold

There are sketches that once had the capability of really BECOMING something. But then they just sit there, staring out at you, and secretly you know you can do something about it…

The following pictures are TO BE CONTINUED…because I really haven’t decided if I’m going to take them to the next level and color them digitally. Never fear! There is hope for them yet. This happened before, and the picture, after many months of neglect, soon became a real boy–a real picture! :3

This is that picture:

Ohh and I noticed that some of my line art is very light. Even with sketches, I’ve gotta get into the habit of making stronger, bolder lines, and using more contrast.

At least with this one, the eyes stand out.

Just some raven elf cat girl.

An interesting couple I’ve been meaning to depict. The girl’s name is Sydney, who is my favorite OC at the moment, and that’s her boyfriend, Connor. Sydney really loves him, and they are practically a perfect couple when they’re not fighting. They are both very active, and love going rock climbing and riding together, and their personalities just click very well. They’re both energetic, spunky and have a similar “not-taking-things-too-seriously” sense of humor. But Connor likes to tease her, especially because he likes to see her angry. It’s somehow a game to him. That’s where they clash, but Sydney likes him so much that she puts up with it; after all, she realizes he’s just a dumb boy.

“What is that feather symbol?” you ask???!?! My first attempt at making some kind of watermark logo! I actually really like it, even though it’s extremely simple. I think I’ll stick with it for a while. I’m so tired of putting text over the image to “copyright” it, particularly because CS hasn’t been letting me put text on anything lately. Nothing to worry too much about, I should be getting CS4 very soon! (I hope so!)

Clutter

I suppose I’ve cluttered up my DA Gallery with too many sketches and practice pictures, and after all, I want to use this blog as sort of a way of documenting the progress I make with my art.

This is what a typical sketch page of mine looks like….

Refs used on the eagles and some of the wolf poses. I was practicing for poses with the wolves…just doing random doodles of the elves though. ^^

I made the mistake of telling my friend I’d have my super scary picture of her OC, Cuddles the Clown, ready soon. That’s not gonna happen! I’ve done some sketches that I tried to stick with, but ended up giving up on because I realized they weren’t really going anywhere. I think the main problem is the fact that I keep going all over the place with my style, and I haven’t quite decided what style would be best for this picture. I’ve never done a scary picture before, so I don’t really know if my manga style will cut it!

These sketches were done on my computer….trying to capture that bloodthirsty side of Cuddles but it’s just not quite working. I almost went with the one on the left, but realized that I wasn’t skilled enough at drawing that particular upwards angle of the head, so the chin ended up looking weird when I tried to finalize the line art and I just stopped. I need to do some pose practices or something to figure out what I can do for this picture. I suppose I could just zoom in on her face or maybe do a bust shot, but I really think that this picture needs a lot of other elements besides her face in order to be really scary….I have some ideas, I just need to practice a bit more before I can carry them out.

Starting out…

I’ve been wanting to make a website for my art for a long time, and I also want to include some updates and comments as I get better at drawing. Though I have numerous journals in real life in which I track my progress in many other things, I don’t feel as if I have any complete documentation of what goes on with my art…really, just a series of pictures to tell the tale. But I’d like to have a bit more information, because I have always loved to write. And maybe in some way, this may inspire or amuse those of you who are also striving to become better artists.

Anyway, I can’t wait to get writing! And also, I’ve never actually blogged before, so I think it will be interesting to see the twists and turns my blog takes over time…perhaps it may very quickly develop into something less or more than what I expect it to be.