Week 32 Sketch Dump & SECRET Updates! (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I hope your weekend is off to a great start. Please enjoy this week's sketches!

This week was a huge one for me and I want to share some plans that I won't be making public for at least the next several weeks. To put it simply, I have decided to start delving into animation! (don't tell anyone xD) I'm keeping it quiet because its a ton of work to even start my first one and I don't want to talk about doing stuff and lose the passion for doing it. But I want to share it with you all because I think my process might help give you clarity on your own journey, but also its just good to put it into words.

I came to this realization by first noticing how little I enjoyed my figure drawings if the face wasn't good. After much serious analysis, I realized its almost always that I get the perspective or the proportions wrong. So I started learning more about the skull anatomy form Ahmed's Course 'Med's Map' and started exploring a new way to structure faces purely based off of perspective. All of this you can see in the sketches and I might even make a Patreon tutorial at some point in the future. I then remembered how much I enjoyed drawing faces (once I can get them correct) and how cool it would be to animate the expressions. I then realized that I was going in circles because that’s what I always wanted to do in the beginning. Glen Keane has always been #1 for me when it comes to inspiring artists. The only difference was that I definitely knew I wasn't about to go back to rendering/coloring again. I am having lesser and lesser patience for spending hours on a single painting only for it to be ‘off’ in some way. Everyone knows how much I just draw without making "finished" stuff and its true. I prefer drawing over everything. Why paint when the part I love to do most is unnecessary? I started to think more and more that maybe I would be at home in animation because spending 10 hours sketching/refining/drawing the same thing... is basically animation at the core. The difference between me now, is that you actually have something to show for it. 50 drawings of different mouths can be something amazing, rather than just a page of loose sketches for the rest of my life. Sure most beautiful animations are just as polished as paintings, I’m not saying its ‘easy’ by any means. But If junior professionals are expected to put out 30-40 seconds a week…then why cant I strive for 3 seconds once I get used to it? I found that even 3 second sketchy gifs looped to some music had a huge impact on not only me, but others as well. So I made my decision.

I'm putting off focusing on body anatomy for 1 month until my course with Will Weston on the Drawing America website starts in September (did I tell you about that already? ) I love how he breaks down the human body and can even make the muscle/bone studies look stylistically appealing. In the meantime, I want to really hit faces hard and make sure that I get the perspective RIGHT. EVERY. TIME. Its my favorite thing to draw. I have alot of incorrect muscle memory with proportions For example: drawing the mouth too low, misaligning the facial features, not understanding how to draw the mouth outside of neutral expressions, and not knowing where the hell to put the goddamn nose! (Just as a reminder, again this with my new standard to draw things from memory. I can easily do these things with reference but the moment I want to stylize things or do it from imagination? These problems come up. )

My study plan is to save every appealing face that I see (which means it makes me think, damn I wish I could draw that!) , photograph or art, and slowly redraw it in my own style. I will be using clear perspective guidelines as you see in some of the sketches above. I want to do a massive amount to retrain my brain to see the perspective and stop defaulting to incorrect proportions. I've even gotten great satisfaction from redrawing some of my latest posts and catching huge mistakes. Its very frustrating to see that I posted artwork with these now…easier to see mistakes, but at least I am growing! Its only a matter of time. Got to stay positive and look ahead. I wont be posting much on IG as well for the rest of the month to focus on not letting what others think influence me. If this is something I want to do, I just need to do it and see where it takes me.

So that’s it for now! Please stay tuned for the livestream on next week on Wednesday at 11 AM EST. I will announce it here and it will be recorded immediately after. And the reference lesson will be out before the end of the month! You’ll never use reference again the same way without hearing my voice in your head reminding you to do it properly!