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Day 18

16/12/10 - I haven't had time to post up my drawings with everything I've had to cram into my days, so I'll start posting the last week up now backdated to the right days. I have to scan them all so I'll do a day or two at a time till I'm caught up.

Aren't chickens great! This is my Sylvia (purple).

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Day 15

I took a bunch of new closeup photos today. I think this isn't quite as good as yesterdays, but each day is more practice.

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Day 14

Another one of my girls. I love doing their comb and wattle as they're all so unique.

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Day 13

Another Chicken... I showed Mark and he even knew straight away which of our girls I'd sketched! :D

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Day 12

I wasn't very happy with my first drawing and it was quite small so I did a second hen today as well.


And this is what my page looks like now. Full of chickens!

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Day 11

Time got away from me tonight so this is a quick 5 minute sketch and she came out ok.

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Day 10

The elements, if you examine each individually in turn are good, but the entire head is slightly too wide. Specifically too much space between the beak/wattle and the eye. Is it noticeable?

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Day 9

One of my girls when she was a baby. She usually looks perpetually worried, but I think she came out looking cross...

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Day 8

Another chicken and trying to do more detail.

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Day 7

Another chicken. I think I want to develop chickens a lot more and try and work out how to do the feathers as well by the end of the month. I'm getting quite happy with these hen sketches but am starting to want more detail.

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Day 6

I like drawing chickens. This beautiful girl is from this photo. I wanted to show how I start a sketch with some faint rough lines and then filling in the details.

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Day 5

Quickie hand sketch. I was trying to capture the details without spending too long on it. I think this was about 15 minutes. From a photo, not my own hand.

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Day 2

Todays sketching started off strongly (in my opinion) with a fox from the anthro tutorial which turned out well though he looks a little dog-like, and then went downhill with a badly drawn dog - German shepherds are harder than they look with all that fluffy.

So I've cropped out my fox for my first pic... Perhaps the step by step instruction slowed me down, though I tried to replicate the steps for the dog.


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Day 1

A warm welcome to the 4 people joining me in this challenge. You can find links to their blogs in my side-bar. If i've missed anyone please let me know. The more the merrier - Happy drawing everyone! I've added a couple more resources to my side-bar too.

Well this certainly needs some work... People are my major weakness.

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Drawing Resources

We're starting our month tomorrow, so in preparation I want to share some resources that I found really helpful last time. They're linked in the side-bar of my blog so you can come back and find them anytime.

If you come across any resources you find useful please share them here!

How to Learn to Draw
While this is mostly text, it goes over the same concepts that we're addressing in the 30 day challenge. That is: If you want to improve at art, you must draw. Everyday. It talks about learning size, form and value and gives you a link to an excellent tutorial which starts with geometric shapes through to anatomy and shading.

Perspective Tutorial
Vanishing points, one point perspective, two point perspective and three point perspective! I think this page has everything you need for a good grounding in perspective. This is what will give your drawings depth, so I'll be going back to this and having a refresher on what I learned last time.

Anatomy Studies Demo
This is what the art school students are doing. It is a useful link because it gives you an idea of the type of sketches and repetition that students are doing through their course. Want to get better at hands? Do hand studies every day until you get it right! The artist answers questions throughout, especially on page 3, so read each page.

Loomis Books
An excellent thing you can do to improve your anatomy is download the Loomis books and work through them. This is highly recommended by nearly everyone on the ConceptArt forums. These books are out of print. You may get a 403 error from the link for some reason. Click the link to bypass the message and you'll get through to the downloads page.

Senshi Stock
An extremely generous resource of photos. You may need a DeviantArt login to see some of them, however it is free to join. The photos are categorised by types of poses making it easy to browse and are the best online resource I've found for practicing figure drawing. If you don't have access to a life drawing class with a real model, these photos are for you. I make a note of which photos I use so that I can go back and retry specific poses to see where I'm improving and where I need to practice.

Stock Hands
A resource for hand photos. Lots of different poses and available in downloadable packs so you can build your own little reference on your computer.

Suicide Girls (warning: nudity)
Suicide Girls celebrates alternative beauty - I guess it is like playboy for the pierced, tattooed and/or unique... The beautiful girls come in all shapes and sizes, which is fantastic for your life drawing practice! I've linked you to the free gallery area, but if you want to find out more check out their homepage

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You Deserve to Make Art!

"I bet when you were five your mum gave you construction paper and you made masterpieces and nobody could tell you differently, nobody! You told yourself back then that you deserve to make art." - Suzi Blu
I love you Suzi Blu!!!!! I love her passion with the strength of a thousand suns. She is absolutely inspiring and her energy through her videos is contagious.

Suzi Blu is an American mixed media artist who has a beautiful child-like style. This is one of the first videos that I ever saw and I went and bought a brand new journal the very next day. I played around with that journal sporadically, but didn't really get going and growing in confidence until I started my first 30 day challenge and really allowed myself to do what she advocates - to allow myself to make art. That is what the 30 day challenge is all about!


Did you watch it? I know you'll either love her or hate her, but I'm hoping you'll love her and get the same contagious inspiration I feel when watching her videos. If you can't see the video then try this link: Art Journal Workshops with Suzi Blu - I'm going to go and watch some more Suzi videos and get inspired for Sunday!

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Anyone Can Draw!

I'm about to start another challenge month this Sunday. I think I may be kidding myself that I have the time to do this one, but with a fresh urge to draw I'm going with the flow. If you'd like to follow along with me and draw as well I'd love to see your blog if you'll be posting your progress online. Or simply leave me a comment and tell me I'm not alone!

I wanted to briefly talk about what inspired me the first time around and continues to inspire me. Jonathan Hardesty decided to learn to paint in September 2002. He literally started from the absolute beginning with no formal art training and committed to painting or sketching one piece every day.


This is one of his very first pieces from that first month. I like to look back at this because it reminds me that ANYONE can be an artist. All it take is the motivation and practice to improve your skills. Drawing is simply a skill that you need to work at often - like every day - to be good at.


Six months later, in March 2003, the improvements have been vast! You can tell that this is a practice sketch, but the tone work and proportions have improved.


This is a more recent piece from March 2010, only 7.5 years after Jonathan began to learn to paint. If you'd like to see the entire progression through the years please visit his thread on the Concept Art Forums, which is an excellent place to get help with learning to draw.

I don't think I have the inclination to ever be this good, although that would be great! I just don't put in the consistent effort like this as we can see from the fact that I have not done very much drawing since my last personal challenge.

I do have a desire to improve, and I do want to feel comfortable grabbing a pencil and making a quick sketch of something that inspires me in my other hobbies, so I'll take up the one month challenge again. Will you join me?

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Lets Draw Together!

Earlier this year I challenged myself to draw every single day for a whole month. One month turned into 50 days before the drawing challenge was abandoned. It is time for another one month challenge!

Why did I do this challenge?
I wasn't happy with any of my drawings for other project ideas. I was scared of putting a pencil to paper thinking other people would judge me. I wanted to improve my art technique and conquer my fear of making art.

Why drawing every day?
The challenge aims to have you putting pencil to paper every day in a conscious effort to practice without prejudice. This means that you allow yourself the pleasure of art with the only goal being making some marks every day and without a specific intent you free yourself to make mistakes, practice and improve.

In my first monthly challenge by the end of 30 days I had seen improvement in the way I saw my subject and while day to day I noticed no changes, after a whole month my techniques had certainly improved. Most important of all, I felt comfortable taking a blank page and making marks all over it.

Everyone can be IS an artist!

What should I draw?

If you’re a complete beginner, then you should start with life drawing. You can start with things you see around you - things on your desk, your opposite hand, flowers... Drawing things from life helps you to learn depth and size relation which is a core skill needed to start and improve drawing from imagination. I can also point you to a couple of good tutorials you can complete in the first week or so.

I will be drawing from life. I might draw from photos some days and something I can see on other days to keep things interesting. If you would like to do life drawing of people and don't have a willing model, I have a link to an online album full of beautiful bodies for artists in a range of typical poses. (don't be shy! They're only poses, no erotica!)

When do we start?
My plan is to start next week and it would be great to have some people to share with this time. We don't all have to start at the same time, so if you would like to do this challenge at any time please do! But, make sure you can commit to at least 30 days in a row!

OK, I'm committing to a date... I'll start on Sunday the 21st of November for a minimum of 30 days! That means I can stop just before Christmas if it gets too much, otherwise I'll be going for as long as I can. You'll know if I'm keeping up because I'll post everything I draw here.

You can make a blog yourself by going to http://www.blogspot.com/ - Let me know where it is, and if you'd like me to link to you so that other people doing the challenge can see too let me know.

Who is the challenge for?
Anyone... Everyone! You could be an absolute beginner or a seasoned artist looking for a challenge.

The only thing I ask is that if you do want to critique someone’s work you do it positively. I am happy to accept comments that may help with my technique, but first and foremost this challenge is about allowing myself to draw, not about making fine art.

Want to join me?
Leave me a comment!!

You'll need a 2B pencil and a sketchbook.
(any pencil is fine, but a softer pencil is easier to create depth in shading)

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Neglected?

Since there has been a 2 week break, I would agree with you if you said neglected. My sewing machine got a bit of a look in on my time plus I had a trip interstate and time for a bit of reflection.

The main thing I have learnt over the past month and a bit is that I was focusing too much on outlines and not enough on building up shading. While outlines have their place, I am starting to feel happier with my drawing when I do a very lgiht base sketch and then build up the edges as with the horned sheep sketch. He is just about to the point where I'm ready to abandon him and move on.

I have increased my confidence and feel more comfortable having a play around which is beginning to develop into an increase of creativity with other hobbies. The flourish of creativity pictured includes some pencil sketching which I am about to enlarge on a grand scale for a new project. (I have too many projects, and even more ideas that need to get out!)

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Day 50

I wanted to try and show the right tone as my camera is washing out areas. I've been working slowly on the areas of shadow... Reasonably happy so far, but perhaps a little more work on him before he is discarded.

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Day 45

I've been slowing down a little to take more time working on developing my sheep. I don't want to rush it just to post up some more progress and some days it doesn't look like a lot of change even if I spend an hour on him.

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Day 40

On the second horn I think I may have to fill out a little more detailing in dark shadows, however I love how the tip turned out. The photo shows a tattered end and I really like how that translated to graphite. I've cleaned up the outside with a kneadable eraser.

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Day 39

I filled in the rest of the first horn, then used a tissue to gently work the colours together. This is a technique I saw someone talk about on deviantArt to give a wider smudge than a tortillon.

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Day 38

A little more work done on the horned sheep that I started last week. I bought a kneadable eraser today to try out.

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Day 37

Another hand... Getting easier to sketch out something that looks fairly good in a short time.

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Day 36

Loomis studies... I feel more frustrated than I did when I started. Perhaps it is my base circles, but most of these didn't really work out... I erased a couple as well.

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Day 35

Another attempt at my hand. I started getting a cramp towards the end of my drawing.

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Day 34

Redrawing subject from day 6 in graphite this time. I'm not sure which I like best to be honest - I can see positive points in both drawings.



Here is the drawing from day 6 which was done in charcoal to compare:

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Day 33

Portrait of a chicken. I am pretty happy with this one. I'm trying to move away from having to outline everything and into building up the shadows slowly. This took me about an hour.

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Day 32

Feathers are another tough area for me, but I like how this turned out. I remember attempting a swan as part of my highschool senior art project and this is significantly better than I remember from then.

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Day 31

I couldn't bring myself to draw another eye tonight, so I tried another life drawing. Still working on proportions...

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Day 30

Here is a horribly wrong attempt and a better attempt at the same eye...



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Day 29

Yet another eye. I really like this one. I didn't do the eyebrow this time.

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Day 27

Not much time!!! This is the roughing out of a horned sheep. I will try and spent more time on him over the next few days. I liked this point of the drawing though. It is sketchy like a gesture drawing, but he looks "right" to me in terms of proportion and depth.

It was hard to photograph because the pencil is so light. Times like this I realise I need to find my scanner.

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Day 26

An attempt at drawing an eye from observation (photo) trying to use what I've learnt from the recent tutorials.

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Day 25

Mouth with better shading thanks to Cataclysm-X's tutorials. I only did part way through his mouth tutorial as I need a kneaded eraser, but it is already a lot better. It is forcing me to take a little more time and think about what I'm doing. I blended a little with a tortillon.

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Day 24

How do I... so many things?

Ok, so I ended up finding a tutorial on eye drawing. The bottom eye is not drawn by copying step by step, not from observation. However, I think I really need shading tutorials just as much, if not more than anatomy tutorials. I also need to try and work bigger studies.

The tutorial I used is by Cataclysm-X.