NEW SERIES: February Moon girls (Patreon)

I'm excited to share with you a new series that I've been working on in the month of February. For each day of February I will draw a girl based on the changing of the moon phases. I've been posting them all to Twitter  and Instagram  where you can follow the series. Since I'm drawing these pieces on a daily basis, I won't be posting them as sneak peeks on Patreon. I will however share my sketching process in this post which I think will be much more beneficial and interesting to you all! :D

The above image features the very first sketches I did to plan out the direction I wanted to take. By doing so I worked out the subject matter (women) and themes (flowers, fashion, and movement) that I wanted to capture throughout this series. 

Why a daily challenge Vicki? you might be asking. Well, I took a stab at completing Inktober for the first time in 2016 (previous attempts were well-intentioned but imcomplete). I found that challenging myself to draw a full drawing a day not only helped me improve quickly, but also encouraged me to push myself creatively and find new ways to explore a single theme. It's hard to motivate yourself to create daily at first, but wanting to feel the satisfaction of seeing a full series at the end of a month keeps me going. 

Here are the other sketches I've done for this series before sketching the actual piece.

You may have noticed that most of these sketches differ from the final iterations. I purposely make the sketches loose and open to interpretation so that I allow myself wiggle room when filling in the details for the final sketch. This way I can allow the piece to evolve as I'm making it and alter details based on what I feel is right in the moment. Main takeaway: Don't detail your initial sketches to a tee. Have a main/overarching idea of what you want to accomplish and nail that down. Let the smaller details come in as you work your way through the piece. Art is all about happy accidents! :D

After I've done my loose sketch, I lay down the final sketch in red colored pencil.  I don't want to sketch with ink straightaway because there's still room for error. I always make sure the final sketch is to my liking before I proceed with inks! 

And last but not least, I ink. No fancy tricks here, just use a steady hand and be patient. 

That's the process I've been using with this daily series so far! Hope it was interesting or insightful and if you're interested follow me on Twitter or Instagram to see my daily posts for this series!Thank you all so much for your support and I'll see you tomorrow with another tutorial! ;D

Love,

Vicki