10,000 Hours of Awesome - Art

Color is not my best medium.

This last week I've really focused on shading. I've done a bunch of other drawing as well but shading was what I wanted to get better at. I practiced continually, several times a day. Supposedly you need to practice things to get better at them, what's up with that, right?!

I'm particularly proud of the bottom sphere in this first picture here.

Noses, ears, and hair; my ancient enemies!

 I hate drawing noses.

And ears.

Aside from that I'm relatively happy with this picture here. After I drew it I decided that I wanted to play around with color a little bit and I like how it came out for the most part.

I'm particularly proud of the shading around the eyes in this picture and the proportions being mostly correct (except for the ears, ignore those!).

Please ignore the dancing cyborg.

 Some more shading work. I have a long way to go but I'm working on it. I think finding simple objects and drawing them quickly, then really focusing on the shading should still be a large goal of mine in the following week.

Shading is what makes a drawing look realistic, even if the lines aren't that great. It's a neat little trick to make a someone "meh" picture look cool, but only when done right.

I'm actually pretty happy with his nose.

One of the resources I've been using is Reddit Gets Drawn. People put pictures of themselves or family or friends, asking the community to draw them.

This is the first picture I put there that got a compliment. All the others have either been ignored or (rightfully) critiqued.

My heart skips a beat in my chest every time I post something up there; I know I'm new and that I have a very long journey ahead of me but I want to contribute too!

I pick a picture that inspires me every day and draw it. Most times I just quietly shrug, shake my head, and don't post anything but so far I've put up three of the portraits I've been happy with.

The one I colorized above is one of the other ones I put up; I didn't get any feedback on it and that's okay! I just assume when I don't get feedback that people are following their mother's advice, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything."

I'm watching a video on drawing every day and reading as much as I can. I then try to take those skills from the videos and put them into practice or at least keep them in mind as I draw.

It's a slow process but I'm seeing progress. I like that.

For next week:

~One "Reddit Gets Drawn" portrait per day

~10 30-second gesture drawings per day

~Watch one "how to draw" video each day

~Find nose tutorial