Breaking Bad Habits in art

First off, my daily sketch. I did this in the early afternoon. Jean Grey, going for the original X-men costume. Decided to toss her hand out front, because I never play with cool foreshortening/perspective jazz like that. I'd say that was the only thing good about this quicky, I really need to work on longer, bigger, daily sketches... working on it.


As for me, I ended up getting really sick at work yesterday. I started sweating, I felt like my head was in a fog, headache, congestion, and a nasty runny nose. As soon as I was done with my first break, I had to ask to leave, it was getting gross. I was constantly blowing my nose or sniffling, yuck. I went home, took a shower, took some medicine and slept for about five hours. Later that night I was up for maybe four more hours, feeling still sick, I went back to bed.
This morning, I was still feeling pretty bad, called work to tell them I'm still not feeling well enough, and slept until noon.
I hate sleeping, I feel like I'm wasting time that I could be using on art, or doing something important. I also hate to call into work. I feel like I'm letting down my co-workers when I'm sick. Well, I only get sick a few times a year, and I'm getting over this one. A few hours ago, I started feeling less sniffly, less congested, but my head still feels like its in a fog. Hopefully it will be all better by tomorrow. Tomorrow I am supposed to be off work, but if I'm feeling better, I'll call to see if they need me.

As for my art, I feel like I am hitting a wall at times. I have a bunch of bad drawing habits from my youth that just need to be broken. I'm reading Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing, Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing For All Its Worth, and watching a Glenn Vilppu dvd, hoping to find some techniques to break my bad habits. This is really frustrating me right now, if anyone has any good art books to check out, please let me know! I sometimes feel like I am drawing with the wrong mindset, and there is an easier way, but I'm just forcing my work. I don't know. I think in part, I need to loosen up, work on bigger paper, try more dynamic poses, and be more comfortable with anatomy. Long winded blog, I'm just trying to vent and mentally sort out some thoughts here.

The Joker - Daily Sketch

I'm really wimping out on these daily sketches! I haven't had enough time to put into something really cool. I spent about 15 minutes at work, and came up with this Joker:

It could be better, but the little sketchbook I have is so small, I get timid about drawing full bodies because there is little room for detail. I need to get over my stupid ocds about drawing, and just draw til my pencil falls off the page.
Anyway, my Joker is taking a lot from the cartoon series, then I also added the Chelsea smile, just like from the newest movie, which I saw again!!! Just as amazing on round two.

Other than my daily sketch, I bought I new t-shirt today. Its a Comic Book Shop t-shirt, but it has the Danzig logo on it, pretty impressive stuff. The CBS shirt was $8.00, if I were to buy the Danzig shirt at Hot Topic, it would have been $25.00, the CBS shirt could not be passed up.
I also went to the annual Baroque festival in Riverfront Park yesterday... For some reason, many women were confusing baroque with Civil War southern belle. What the hell?! They needed to be beaten, but not as badly as the people trying to do an accent, announcing the events on the mic. They were speaking softly, or gently, hard to describe, but in their mind that equates to a European 17th century accent. It sounded a little closer to gay than baroque to me, but I never lived in the 17th century so what do I know?

Oh, I also bought a few used books a couple days ago from abebooks.com, for those that don't know, its a network of used bookstores across the globe, and you can find anything you want at great deals. I picked up two Burne Hogarth books (Dynamic Figure Drawing, Dynamic Anatomy), Drawing a Likeness, and Drawing Animals. Hoping these might add to my arsenaul of art skills.
Well, that's about it for today. I'm seriously trying to put together some nicer stuff for a daily sketch, just you wait!

Más sobre mi hermano y pintura de hoy

First off, my brother had his heart shocked to try to reset it to a sinus rhythm. It worked but only for a while, and he's back in a fib. He's on some medication and was sent home, but they are going to be talking with the doctor to see what to do next. Hopefully all will go well for him, he's really healthy, so I don't know why he's having this happen to him.


Secondly, I stayed up most the night, after I left the hospital, working on this:



I did this in one friggin night. My friend Jessie asked if I could have the painting of this done for her so she could give it to her husband today. So I worked my ass off through the night to paint that, and then I get a call while heading over that she was out to eat with the family, and to bring it over maybe tomorrow... Yeah, a little irritated after burning the candle at both ends.. Oh well, life moves on. Now that it's sitting around, I might add the detail to the shell that I wanted originally.

No Daily Sketches, and my brother

Sorry there hasn't been any frequent daily sketches this week. I have been drawing a little, but my mind has been preoccupied lately. My brother had surgery yesterday to remove bone spurs from his neck. That all went fine, but last night his heart went into Atrial Fibrillation. For those who don't know, basically it means he's having irregular fibrillations between heart beats. Here's an example:


Wow.. I've worked way too long in a hospital... I worked five years in the kitchen, and three months as a transporter, and I know all this info from dealing with patients and staff, that's sad!

Anyway.. Tomorrow, the doctor is going to stop his heart and start it back up again to hopefully reset it back to a normal sinus rhythm. Again with the stupid nurse jargon, I sound geeky. So, that's what is holding me up from doing a lot of work. I have some pages I'm going to be doing as daily sketches for sequential art practice coming up. I'm also doing two paintings, those should be done soon enough and up in the gallery and here. I'm going to take a shower now, I've been at work all day, and spent all my breaks and a lot of time after work in my brother's room at the hospital.

Shouting into the void known as the Internet

Sometimes I feel like my blog is me just talking to a wall. Anyone out there? First three people to respond with an idea (some restrictions apply), I'll sketch it up for a daily sketch.

Dark Knight and THREE Daily Sketches

I saw The Dark Knight today, it was the best movie this summer! I was kind of grumpy that people were suspecting Heath Ledger to be receiving awards for his role before the movie was released, but now I say he deserves everything he can obtain for that role. I feel bad for his passing because he deserves the hype. The film was phenomenal, the movie is like a great crime drama plus Batman... Amazing, watch it again and again!

Secondly, at work I put together a couple daily sketches. First two about 30 minutes each, the last about an hour and a half.


This is some crazy dude staring in the sky while smoking. I was thinking of awful office jobs while drawing this.



Someone said something about Dead Pool, so I drew a shaved headed zombie with goggles and a gun.. makes sense, right?


Lastly, I tried imitating Mystique's pose from an X-Men cover by Humberto Ramos, from memory. I did pretty well if i do say so myself. The arms are slightly funky, but the overall piece contains a sense of attitude.

Its hard to put together daily sketches, since some days I don't sketch at work or home due to just being busy. So I feel these three made up for some missed days. Also, I'm trying to work my way up to longer sketches. Its just hard, because most of my free time is only during my breaks at work, so I'm just drawing on my little pocket sketchbook which is hard to render details on.

Hellboy 2 & Daily Sketch

First off, the daily sketch. I spent about a half hour tops on this. Its in my pocket sized sketch book, I sketched it at work:




I've been having problems recently drawing decent profile faces, so I did this to get back into the swing of it. I might have a few more of these as daily sketches for practice.

Okay, now onto more movie talk. I saw Hellboy 2 last night, it was a lot of fun. I like how the sequel got into the world and lives of the non-humans, and we saw the bonds between all the characters since time wasn't wasted in having to introduce each character.
As always, Selma Blair is gorgeous as ever. I think the Princess in the movie may have been Gweneth Paltrow, she looked an awful lot like her, but she was heavily covered in elf makeup... or at least I assume her race was elvish. If you want a silly action movie, Hellboy 2 might be for you.