Draw Every Day project for 2016

So, I've been really inconsistent in how often I draw lately. Some days I'm just not feeling it, so I don't draw anything, which makes me feel bad, which makes me not want to draw the next day, which makes me feel bad again, etc. It's a brutal cycle that's holding me back as an artist. I have been doing a lot of practice drawing that I haven't been uploading, but even so, I haven't been doing as much as I'd like.

One of the artists I follow just successfully completed a "draw every day" project last year, and it's inspired me to try the same thing this year. So, here's what's going to happen: I am going to put pen/pencil to paper, or stylus to tablet, or whatever, and draw something at least once per day, every day during 2016. No exceptions, no excuses. Even if I'm super busy, or tired, or not feeling well, I can find the time and strength to at least draw a little doodle. There's no rule about what I have to draw, or how complex it has to be, I just have to draw something.

To kick this off, I drew a silly colored pencil doodle of Pepe wearing a BB-8 hat.

Daisy Ridley pencil drawing

It's been a while since I've posted any updates here. I'm not done practicing making art, I've just been spending a lot of time recently practicing things I've never been very good at, like drawing human figures/poses without a reference, and while I'm making good progress, I'm not ready to start showing any of that yet.

I do have something today, though. Since I've been spending time practicing things I'm bad at, I needed to take a break from that and remind myself that I can draw things that look good, so I did a pencil drawing from a photo reference. Because there's a big national and religious holiday coming up soon, in keeping with the holiday spirit, I drew Daisy Ridley.

Sketches of Daisy Ridley as Rey

I'm trying to re-teach myself how to draw real people again, so I drew some sketches of Daisy Ridley's character Rey from the Force Awakens trailers. They're pretty quick sketches and a bit rough, but I feel like I've made some progress and learned some things while drawing these three sketches, which is the important thing.

Android icon set

It's been a while since I've posted any updates here.  Work's been kicking my butt lately and I've been too exhausted to get my creativity on. I'm going to force myself to sit down and start drawing things whether I feel like it or not, so hopefully I'll have some more art to show soon.

In the meantime, I got a new phone. My old Nexus 4 was slowly dying, so I bought a shiny new Nexus 5X. A new phone means a new theme, so I created a new icon set for the app folders on my home screen. The icon set I created for my Nexus 4 was designed to match the default theme in Beautiful Widgets, but for this new set, I followed Google's material design guidelines. The center graphics in each icon are based on Google's material icons set.

It's a small set that only includes the icons you see here, so I doubt anyone but me is going to find it very useful, but if you want to use it, you can download the images here. If there's demand for it, I might expand this icon set in the future, so while I won't make any promises, if you want an icon in this style that isn't included, let me know what color and graphic you want, and I'll see what I can do.

Assault Android Peanut

I drew another assault android from Assault Android Cactus: Peanut.

No scanned version this time, because my scanner was blowing out the lighter colors too much, so you just get a photo taken with my phone. I bought some fancy new artist pens (Amazon link), and they're way better than drawing with a Sharpie. Having different size tips for doing bold lines and fine details is really nice, and the pens put down really dark ink that doesn't smudge or bleed through the paper, even in spots where I put down a lot of ink, like around the eyes and midsection. The colors are colored pencil.

I noticed when it was too late to change it that the hand holding the drill is facing the wrong way. Whoops, oh well. Who knows how an android's wrists work, anyway.

As always, you can find the work in progress shots in my Sketches / WIP gallery.

Feathered T. rex sketch

Quick sketch of a feathered T. rex. What a majestic and fearsome beast, hear her powerful roar.

I drew a Cactus

(From Assault Android Cactus, one of my favorite games to come out this year.)

I started the sketch with a pencil, and in recognition of Inktober, I did the line work with a fine point Sharpie, then finished off the coloring with colored pencils. I used the character select screen in the game as a reference.

I'm not quite as psyched with how this turned out as I am with my Inkling drawing, probably because this was done on paper where I couldn't keep hitting undo over and over to fix every little mistake, but this is probably more representative of where my actual drawing ability is at right now. I definitely need to work on my confidence in my line art, because drawing with a marker on real paper where I can't hit the undo key if I make a mistake makes me incredibly nervous.

You can find the in-progress photos in my sketches/WIP gallery.

I bought a sketchbook that I'm filling with practice sketches, but most of them are very practice sketchy and aren't worth even putting in my sketches gallery. I'll be sure to keep posting the ones that aren't completely terrible, though. 

Ira Glass on taste, creativity, and getting past your disappointment in your own work

I think I'm going to print out this quote and tape it to the cover of my sketch book so I'll see it every time I draw something that isn't as good as I want it to be.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

― Ira Glass

Ninja Pizza Girl mini-review

Ninja Pizza Girl just came out today. It's a game I've had my eye on for a while, so I bought it and just spent the last couple hours playing it. It's a pretty neat game! It plays sort of like a 2D Mirror's Edge, where you're running, jumping, and sliding along rooftops, and get more points for having better flow through the level and finding items that are hidden on more challenging routes.

You play as a teenage, pizza-delivering ninja, and you have to deal with other ninja kids from a rival pizza company who bully you. Its story sends a lot of good messages about bullying, acceptance, being a good person, loving yourself, the benefits of having a support group, and how good pizza can bring people together.

The game can get pretty challenging, especially in the later levels, and there were some frustrating bits later on, though I didn't try turning down the difficulty from the default middle setting. The story mode isn't particularly long (I finished it in about an hour and a half) but there should be a lot of replay value if you want to go back and try to improve your times, and there's a speed run mode where you can compare your times against others on a global leaderboard. Even without all that, the story mode was satisfying and I feel like I got my money's worth (it's $11 on sale right now on Steam. $13 normally).

One cool thing about this game is that it was made by a family. The parents are professional game developers, and they made this game with the help of their kids. Most of the concept art and comic book-style story sequences, for example, were created by their teenage daughter.

Anyway, it's a cool game, and I recommend it.