#8 (of 29)

Remember that drunk drawing night from earlier this month? This is the son of the fabulous lady who I was drunk drawing with.

I don't know how professional craft bloggers can make their stuff, stage perfect photos and then write posts about them AND have a life. It just astounds me. I did this sketch on Friday and I'm just blogging it now on Monday night. Did I do any more sketches? Of course not! I kept myself busy making another card.

And right now I'm assembling a project that I started three months ago. I thought I had a lot of time when I started, but now the birthday I was doing it for is coming up fast!

So I think the next goal for myself is at least one more face before day #29 comes up. I can totally do this.

#7!

Dustin from "Stranger Things". Random paint and ink smeared on to Canson sketchbook, drawn in pencil and Tombow Fudenosuke soft tip pen. I was charmed with Dustin the moment he beamed his sunny, toothless grin at Nancy Wheeler after offering her some leftover pizza.

I tried really hard to just stick with the Fude pen, but I wanted to throw in some dark, then couldn't wrap my head around the inks and broke down with some colored pencil. Note to self: study other people's inks.

I was on a roll, then I had dayjob stuff and greeting cards to make and have been trying to get back in my groove since. I still have three more cards to make in the next couple weeks!

I've also started looking at the digital painting tutorials at Ctrl+ Paint. It made me realize that I'm not getting the results I wanted because I was Doing it Wrong. So at least that's one frustration solved, but now if I want to get competent at digital painting, I'll have to spend a lot more time practicing. ^_^

29 Faces #6

Portrait of an Albanian immigrant photographed at Ellis Island. Tombow Fudenosuke soft tip pen over gelli printed color in a Canson sketchbook.

So, that's been a week and some.

I finished lettering the last volume of New Lone Wolf and Cub and then went to Rose City Comic Con. After that weekend, I was completely fried and beat. And then made a greeting card from scratch...and sent it late. Yay!

This has put me seriously behind on the Faces, but that's okay because...I HAVE NOW BEAT MY LAST CHALLENGE RECORD OF FIVE FACES. Okay, not such a big deal, but I gotta take my victories where I can get them. I've got like 4 or 5 other portraits lined up so hopefully I'll be able to get even closer to 29 faces.

Faces #4 and #5 (of 29)

I didn't think this was gonna be so hard. It's really weird because once I get going, I'm mostly okay.

Since I attempted Carl from "Sling Blade", I thought it'd be funny if I did Lorne Malvo from "Fargo". It was kinda hard to pick which incarnation since he's a bit of a chameleon, but I settled on the largest image with the highest contrast.

And here I tried capturing Lady Chablis. I saw all the crazy hatching I did on Malvo and really didn't want to do that here. It's really easy to age a female face when you cross hatch it and I thought I kinda overdid it with Face #4. Instead I darkened spots with pencil. In retrospect, I probably should have gone even darker so that the highlights contrast more. Both are acrylic wash, colored pencil, Tombow Fudenosuke fat tip pen, and white gelly roll pen.

This is a critical period because I now have five faces done like last 29Faces challenge. This weekend is Rose City Comic Con in Portland, so a good portion of my weekend is gonna be spoken for. I also have dayjob stuff, and a couple birthday cards to make by week's end. I'm pretty determined to get 29Faces done even if it goes into the first week of October. So we'll see...

29Faces: Faces #2 and 3

But where are Faces 4 and 5? They're comin'.

The past few days have been rather busy with much going out. This delights me because I get to play Pokemon Go. Everyone else has leveled up way past me and thousands have stopped playing altogether, but I'm still amused by the game. This also puts a crimper on my location drawing because I'd rather be catching 'mon, but oh well, I'm sure it'll stop be amusing after a while.

For Face #3 I tuned in to "Sling Blade" and did a not-very good likeness of Carl.

Then a friend invited me over late night and I drank a little bourbon and chatted. We were both supposed to draw, and actually we did get some sketching, but we got even more chatting done. Which is okay, I haven't done that in a while and it was a delight to catch up with a friend. She's Face #4. I was pretty drunk when I was drawing and thought I did a horrible job, but looking at it now, it's not too bad. However I DO want to work over it to "fix" it.


Today I just came back from tabling at a yard sale at Guardian Games' parking lot. It was a really nice day for it until the clouds burned off. My husband is totally burnt and my forehead and nose is a bit singed.

So after I post this, I'll be priming more pages in my sketchbook for more Faces, hopefully sketch two more faces and then pass out until tomorrow. Man, that sun just sucks the energy right outta ya.

29Faces September 2016 Edition, Face #1

 

 Tom Hanks in "The Ladykillers". Fudenosuke Fine Tip pen over acrylic paint that was gelli printed onto my sketchbook.

I was excited to start this challenge. I started gathering reference so I could bang out a face a day without effort. I was planning to stretch my abilities a bit and try a more cartoony, caricature style. I was gonna do ACEOs...I had such plans! But when the 30th rolled around, I didn't start. Then it was Sept 1st and I was continually distracting myself. I even laid down some marks in colored pencil and suddenly decided I had to do some bookkeeping. By 11pm, I was having a mild anxious episode and had to walk away from the computer, have a snack and watch TV. I had would myself so tight, I couldn't do anything. Later at 1am I curled up on my bed with my sketchbook open, telling myself to just get SOMEthing down and banged this out.

In the past couple months, I've been working on an artist's block that I've had for half my lifetime and I didn't realize that I could make myself physically ill trying to lunge at it. Note to self: whatever I was doing wrong at my desk, don't do that!  So holy cow, it's going to be a lot harder to break this block than I thought!

My adjusted expectation is to get through the challenge with more than 5 entries (which is how many I did earlier this year), preferably with all 29.