With his sage like wisdom and powerful upper-arm prowess.

Items of note:

1.  This is close to what i pictured in my head when I set out to draw it, but from a completely different angle

2.  I need to start incorporating color somehow.

This subject came up last night in a discussion…..it immediately produced a mental image so potent I felt compelled to give it a shot.   Not drawing it was no longer an option.

I like how the picture ended….although I noticed a couple things I need to work on:

1.  Shading – It’s not as uniform as I would have liked

2. Weight – The tire not showing weight on it bothers me

3. Background – There is none, and while I liked it at first, it’s really irksome now

4. Lettering – I’m really trying to get the lettering and balloons correct

With all that said, this was fun to draw and had me giggling afterward.  Who doesn’t love a taco?

I’m having so much fun with this whole Artwork Challenge thing that I’ve decided to move over to my personal blog.  Check over there for updates!

Had some time yesterday, and since I enjoyed drawing that dragon so much, I decided to do a quick search for some more art to try and, well, copy.  Before I can start making things up from memory, I have to see how other people do things, and looking at comic books and fantasy concept art seems like a great place to start.

So in my search, I found this image, and I drew this:

Gold Dragon

Might try doing some digital coloring of that, not sure.

I’m still going through the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book, but in the meantime, I don’t want to get hung up on the exercises in the book at the expense of just having fun and drawing.

So today I cracked open a D&D sourcebook (D&D 3.5 Draconomicon p. 39) and flipped through until I found some fun fantasy line art to work from.  Always loved blue dragons, and this one looks like he’s smiling in a way.  Pretty happy with this one.  I even like the half-finished quality of it, so in the future I’ll be able to look back and see some of my in-progress work.

Limited myself to 25 minutes, took a snapshot with my cameraphone and adjusted the levels in Paint.NET.  I’ll try and get a clean scan later.

Blue Dragon

As an aside, I’m having a blast while drawing, just losing myself for a bit.  It’s even helping me focus at work; I feel like drawing for a bit helps me burn off whatever creative restlessness I’ve been having lately.  I definitely feel like I have more confidence while I’m drawing, even after only a few weeks of getting back into things.

I had the idea of an poem/story that would let me learn some other artists styles.  It will take a few pages to get into it….actually probably a while, so this is the first.  This was actually a lot of fun to do and I felt like I learned a lot during it, such as:

- Do a rough plan of how the page will flow before hand.

- Know how the page is going to begin and end before starting.

- Let the words support the pictures and fill in action when the pictures don’t.

- I need to start using a ruler.

This was actually a tough picture for me to do.  I was going for something simple and smooth, with as little rough drawing as possible.  Usually I do a ton of rough, light lines and then pencil over it with a solid darker line, but for this I deliberately tried something smooth and fluid.

I’m currently going through Betty Edwards’ The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.  We used some of the techniques from the author back in one of my high school art classes, so I figured I’d pick up the book and see where it takes me.

Before you begin, there are three exercises they ask you to do as a way to measure your progress.  I really liked this one, so I’d like to post it.

My Left Hand

Got back from vacation, and Sam called me out on the fact that I hadn’t drawn anything – exactly what he should have done.  So I took 15 minutes and did a quick sketch of my car key and posted this via my phone.

Thanks, Sam.

Update 7/20/2010:
Replaced phone pic with a scan.

Car Key

Here’s what I drew today.  I find myself drawing this guy from time to time, bald and overweight AND his pants don’t fit him.  He finds himself in varying levels of overweight-ness.  In addition to the daily drawing I’m also doing daily writing, so this was an attempt to meld the two together.  This piece  started with the line that divides the picture and the words, as that was the shadow line on my page.  The background is what I look at when I sit and draw outside.

Lesson learned:  The text needs to be darker so it will translate when I scan it.   That and the lady I work next to thinks I’m a little nuts since I’m asking her to scan these pictures.