Toy Animal Study Finished Project

Hello everyone! Before I get down to business, I'd like to celebrate the fact that this is my 50th post! If you've been keeping up with my blog for a while, thank you for the support! If you're new, thanks for taking a look and I hope you'll stick with me as I record my artistic journey!

So, now to the art. I've been working on this piece for the past few weeks and I think it turned out really well!

Here's the first stage of the final piece, where I sketched out the toy animal and broke it down into it's basic shapes. Most of the time I spent on this drawing was during this phase, because it's more important to get the correct proportions and alignment than anything else. Once that is all set, adding value is easy.

Once the proportions are correct and the planes are all mapped out, adding value is very simple. A key part of this project was using value to create an area of emphasis, so I built up a lot of value in the head of the bottom figure and left the other two figures less developed. I also shaded in the background in select areas so that it was very clear where the area of emphasis was. Overall, I feel that I accomplished what I was going for with this piece. (Sorry that this image is so much more red than the last one. The pictures were taken at two different times with different lighting, and my camera kept trying to correct the photo since it was so dominantly warm)

The Development Process for my Next Project

Hey I'm back! It's been quite a long time, but I've started school again and finally have some new artwork to show! These first few drawings show the process I am taking to develop my first project for my Drawing II class. I have to draw the same toy animal three different ways to create a good composition. My teacher is basically having us create our own studies in the same style as studies done by the masters like Da Vinci and Michaelangelo.

The first step is thumbnails, which help to quickly establish a good composition:

Next is a practice drawing of our toy. The goal was to focus on getting the right proportions and angles, and making sure everything on the animal lined up right:

After that we had to pick our best thumbnail and do several comps. This step is to establish where the focal point will be in the final drawing and how it is going to be emphasized:

That's most of the work I had to do before even getting to the final drawing. A new post about that will be up by mid-week the latest, so make sure to keep checking back!