What??

I’m bored, okay? It’s only Week 5 and I’m already dying over here. I’m sorry, I just don’t have the inspiration right now. Until a few days ago when I thought it was a good idea to draw characters from books. I don’t know where it came from, but here we go! Our first victims are Jude and Cardan, from the Folk of the Air Trilogy (would highly recommend, 10/10).

Reference

This week I used 2 reference photos. One of the perspective, one of Jude and Cardan (depicted by JessDraws).

The Process

This time, I made sure to videotape the whole process! It took about 1 and a half hours to complete, but the setup time took 30+ mins for me to get the right angle of the camera. Even then, it still wasn’t good since it was at a slight angle, which messes up the viewpoint. It also took me 30 mins to get into the ease of drawing with cameras rolling. I was very tense for the most part up until the end, when I finally relaxed.

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU PLAN TO READ/ARE READING THE TRILOGY.

Some things I love about the artwork are some of the details. I really like mini easter eggs, since it feels so good to be able to see it. Compared to other artworks I’ve made, this artwork contains very little easter eggs, but more than my previous artworks in Genius Hour since I am drawing something I like this time. I like the parking lot depiction in the background, as Cardan does go to a parking lot in the last book. He seems to respect a lot of the mortal culture even after him being especially rude to Jude. (It’s a enemies to lovers trope). I like Cardan’s crown, it’s always cute. Also, it’s in the cover of every book of the trilogy, which means it’s pretty important (hint hint). Jude is always very cute with her lil’ horns and I love the way she’s looking in the artwork. I also added a little star and moon earrings, the one Locke steals from her. Honestly, I love it so much.

Here’s the video I promised you! It’s really sped up. Also, do you see the part when I wrap my water cup with paper towels? Yeah, I punctured a hole into the bottom of the cup. Also yes, I don’t know how that happened.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this was a really great project. It took way less time to draw than the last project. I’m happy with a 2 hour artwork of this. I think the lighting doesn’t match the reference, but that it also has it’s own part in it. I love the way I did their shading, it really is wonderful. Or maybe I’m becoming delusional because I’m writing this at night. I am quite surprised by how quickly this was finished, I was prepared for doing it in two days, as I was sure I wouldn’t finish it. Some things I would change would be the lighting, and maybe the background. The background should be more in the background, but this one looks sorta with the artwork. I don’t know if that’s good or not. I also see Jude’s right eye (our left) is very pale. I didn’t intend for it to be very colourless and will pay attention to make both eyes the same colour. There is also an issue with how Jude is positioned. I think that she looks sorta weird with the pants being gray and the shirt being beige. It looks cut out a bit and I don’t know what happened. I will try to make clothing look more natural in the future. Next time, I will actually use a good quality water cup, so it doesn’t leak everywhere while I’m painting. I also think that I will use a different pose, as it is clear that I do not have much trouble with this one. Onto the next victims from other book series!

Again.

I am going to do Art Perspectives with watercolour. Let’s see how long it takes until I change my mind again.

Watercolour?

Even though my original plan was digital art, I feel as though I can also improve with watercolour. I find my main problem right now is dimensions. Digital art is so different from traditional, but the dimensions are the same. As long as you have good dimensions in a drawing, if intended, then it will be very lovely to look at. Having bad dimensions makes a drawing look “weird” and “off”. I mostly want to use watercolour because it’s more fun in my opinion. I believe that I need to use the best of my time. Personally, I’m not too keen on staring at a screen for 3+ hours and creating a semi-masterpiece.

(New) Materials!

Another reason why I chose to do watercolour is that I have SO MANY supplies that are sitting around. I love watercolour, so that’s probably why.

Out of them all, I am most excited for the new brushes, as they came in just a few days earlier!

What about the older brushes?

Some of the reasons why I chose to buy new brushes was because the old ones didn’t hold any water. I don’t blame them, as they are meant to be used for all-purpose. I do beg to differ at the “quality brush set label”. It’s not quality at all, the hairs fall out, and there is only 7 of them, of which half of them are damaging the paper. Would not recommend.

The new brushes were actually extremely cheap compared to the quantity and quality of the older brushes. There were many different types of brushes, and each of them came individually packaged. Not only that, but the hair on the brushes NEVER FELL OUT. I’m pretty surprised that it has exceeded my expectations. Also, aren’t they so cute in that lil’ glass bottle?

Reference

Overall Process

Firstly, I used a 3B pencil to sketch out the overall dimensions.

Then, I added base layers with watercolour. I found that paint residue left over from last project was floating up to the surface of the water in the cup, if that makes any sense. It doesn’t bother me, but is pretty interesting to note.

In previous projects, I had originally started with an important part of the person, such as the eyes. Then, I would paint on lashes and get on with it. This time, I decided to build up from the less important parts, as then I wouldn’t smudge the lashes and details. This sort of worked, but I got really tired and bored by the end, so I didn’t put much effort into the more important parts of the person.

Something else I forgot to do in one of the earlier stages was to remove the pencil reference lines. You can still see it in the final product.

After, I made some the colours more definite and added on the final details, but I can see more area for improvement.

Before we continue to areas of improvement, I forgot to record myself drawing this! After I had finished, I had an eureka moment, where I realized that I could use my music stand to perch my iPad on and then record the whole entire workspace in a timelapse. Next time, I will be sure to do that!

What’s a Watercolour Block?

Before, I would use watercolour pads to create my artworks, but I found them so annoying to work with. Before you even started the artwork, you would have to cut it to desired length and then tape it down on all 4 sides. I found that so annoying and it wasted a LOT of my time.

Then I found this thing called watercolour blocks. They’re paper that’s glued together on all sides. It’s basically taping the paper down for you! All you have to do at the end is grab this little “paper knife” and then run it along the sides to break the glue! This intrigued me and since blocks and pads were both similar costs, I decided to try the blocks. This is probably something that I will never leave again, I can usually set up my whole entire workspace in less than 10 mins now! (I am quite well aware that that just sounded like a advertisement to buy watercolour blocks.)

I also remembered to Timelapse a really quick video of my removing of the paper.

Areas for Improvement

I find that dimension is still a thing I need to work on. This face still feels distorted and I need to make sure it doesn’t. I also need to make sure that my reference lines aren’t in the final product. Overall, I rate this a 9/10 for experience, mostly because of the new brushes. A 8/10 for the final product.

What’s the Problem?

The issue is that I am not committed. Sure, maybe the thought of improving digital art seemed SO COOL last week, but now I’m not so sure anymore. This is often recurring (as you could see with the music issue) but I can see that I won’t finish anything if I don’t commit to the plan. Often, my plan revolves around what I feel like doing that day. Once I wrote 10 pages of a story in a week, then I left it for 5 months and, suddenly, I’m back up again, writing another 14 pages in two days. As you can see, this trait certainly is not helping in the process. Not only that, but my schedule is only going to fill up for the next 3 weeks to come and I don’t think I will have much time for this.

Let’s try to continue…

I’m sick of digital art. Already!! I think that this week, I will focus on watercolour. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on anymore.