I just finished a seven-day drawing challenge! I am gearing up for a longer challenge along the lines of my InkPrep-whatever, but in the meanwhile, I did a shorter one to warm up.
Here are the Tumblr posts I made along the way, as I drew 8 illustrations in 7 days: Day 1, Day2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 6.5, Day 7, and the wrapup post.
[Oh yeah, I have a Tumblr for my art now. So far, the only social media(ish) platform I don’t hate.]
I always enjoy my self-imposed art challenges, and this was no exception! Here are some of my thoughts about the experience:
The art skill I was focusing on was posing characters and rendering magical effects (as well as rendering in general: you know, shading, highlights, and all that).
- I could definitely feel myself getting better and more practiced at anatomy and perspective, so I started trying more challenging poses by the end. The perspective on the soaring girl (bottom right) nearly defeated me.
- For the magical effects, I learned that less is more. Especially in terms of colors, weight, and blending. On the first few days, I slathered color onto overlay layers and then overworked them with the smudge tool. Then I ended up erasing a lot of it when it didn’t look right. On the later days, I chose my colors and brushes carefully and blended just enough to retain interesting patterns in the brush strokes.
I chose a theme of recovery and replenishing oneself, probably because that’s what I needed. All my characters were fantasy girls/women, inspired by YouTuber LavenderTowne’s penchant for personifying concepts (and foods, planets, devices, cryptids, etc.) as cute girls.
And lastly, the illustrations form a bit of a story when put together, as in the gallery above! I drew them out of order, because I was deciding the parameters of the challenge on the fly. As is my wont with projects like this. I drew the first illustration, then chose the theme, then decided on the number of days of the challenge, and only came up with the title on the last day.
It’s fun letting a project evolve on its own!