newgrounds

Found the music section of newgrounds. Lots of cool stuff there. Listened to some while sketching this, again in cherrybrush. This is a crop, since it started out as a face and the rest turned out kind of random. I like her gaze. No reference.

Random big-eyed woman + wine glass

Arbitrary female face drawn in cherrybrush, grew into a half-figure (which obviously means the pose is stiff and boring). 100% cherrybrush means no selections or transformations, so I spent some time repainting stuff to fix proportions until I got bored/blind. Her whole head should probably be a bit smaller in relation to the body. Eyes are definitely too huge, but I didn't want to redraw them (again).
I'm actually sort of happy with how it looks if you zoom in to a crop just around the face. I had big problems with the mouth and nose though, and I don't feel like I could comfortably shade/paint those areas fully. Maybe I should attempt that next time.
No reference used, of course. Wouldn't have been such a struggle otherwise.

Mint space chick

I set aside most of today for drawing, but ended up outside running multiple errands and inside doing other stuff. Spent maybe two hours drawing, tops.
I think I'm having some trouble bringing myself to just draw random practice stuff right now. Feels like I ought to try doing something more sensible, like posing and finishing off a drawing or painting rather than just copying photos for no particular reason. When I'm working on a "piece", I can easily go on for hours without stopping, but when I do random meaningless stuff I lose focus after just 15 minutes and start looking for a way out. It's fun while actually drawing, but as soon as one sketch nears its rough completion I have no desire to start another.

This one here is the last I did today - it was a head loosely based on an image I found, which I drew quickly and lightly. Decided I wouldn't risk ruining it by going over it with darker lines and more definition. Made the "mistake" of trying to add a body which went all kinds of bad places. Eventually salvaged it (more or less) and added a gun and colors to distract the viewer from spotting bad anatomy. Actually tricking her out with a suit and accessories was fun. It reminded me of a short period I had a few years ago when I drew cheesy old-school sci-fi women. I might take that up again, make a little series.

White bodysuit

...with a curious black dot sewn into the stomach area.
I spent the longest time today not really wanting to start sketching for some reason... millions of reasons why I had to do this or that first, and wasn't feeling up to it. Then I forced myself to grab a pencil and hammer one out before I went to play some games, and it ended up being pretty enjoyable. Go figure - you have to actually try before you can tell if it'll be uncomfortable or not.

Sketch week

Drawing has been taking a back seat while I was working on my latest flash game. It is done now though, and I've decided to make sketching my main focus this week. We'll see how ambitious I end up being - so far it's going slow but I'm happy with the results.
These were drawn from various reference found online.

Reachess

Sketched for a couple of minutes in CherryBrush, just something random. I've been working on a game for the last week and haven't really had much drawing practice besides game graphics. Will hopefully finish the game in a couple of days and then get back to doing some painting.

Coil

Just a couple of random sketches today. After doing a few, I noticed a trend in dynamic poses that there's often a curve or line of tension reaching through the body like a wound spring or coil, waiting to be released when the action is performed (be it a running step or a kick/punch etc). It probably has something to do with building up leverage in the opposite end of the body, in the form of mass that can drive and balance the motion to deliver maximum force in whatever is the key element (fist or foot for instance).

I imagine that a football player arches backwards, extending his abdominal muscles and moving the arm opposite his kicking leg back, before moments later compressing all his frontal muscles leading to an opposing contraction of the body, with the leg being thrust forward forcefully and balanced by the arm and upper torso bending forward at the same time.

Seen like that, most such "coil" action seems to happen diagonally through the body, across an arm and a leg. It makes for nice poses anyway (not really put to use in the larger sketches on this page, as they were drawn before I thought of this).
You have to play the action back and forth in your head to figure out what should happen before and after the imaged moment and thereby how the figure should be posed to appear most sensible. It's no doubt a healthy mental exercise, and stick figures are quick and painless to draw so I guess this should be a more common element in my sketch routine...