Daily Sketch 115 - Prince

Photo reference by Jene Espiritu

The challenge of this subject , aside from drawing the likeness of the dog, was in figuring out the form underneath the shaggy fur and to render it convincingly, without overdoing the details of it all. 

I have been sketching dogs for months now, and yet I had a hard time with this dog, a shaggy maltese named Prince.  I originally plan to use Clip Studio Paint for this sketch, but since I was having such a hard time drawing and painting this that to use a program I'm still unfamiliar with would be another difficulty I wouldn't want to take on right now. So I reverted back to using Artrage.

After this sketch, I plan to focus in learning the technical aspect of digital painting. So no more sketching dogs for a while.  There's so much I need to study and learn.   Now that I'm in the right frame of mind, it's  a good time for me to do just that.  

Daily Sketch 114 - Sace

Learning a new software for digital painting can be intimidating and overwhelming. I would usually watch a lot of video tutorials on how to use it.  It can be so tedious and boring. And so I decided to just start using it in creating an artwork, and learn the tools and presets as I go. This means that my workflow wouldn't be as smooth-sailing yet, because of the frequent stopping to research the solution to whatever problem I would encounter in using  the program.

This is why I've been using Artrage for as my main drawing and painting application for the past 4 months now because of it's simplicity and user-friendliness that allows me to just focus on the drawing and painting aspect of digital art, without much  technical complications.

However, I also wanted to learn and be proficient in the other digital art softwares like Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint. And so, for this sketch, I started the drawing the initial blocking and painting in Artrage 5, then continued to finalize the painting in  Clip Studio Paint. So far, I managed to replicate my Artrage work process to Clip Studio Paint successfully.  I know I'm just skimming the surface of the program, and there's a lot more to explore and learn.  But for a simple one-character painting, I think I adapted to it very well.

So here's my Daily Sketch for the day - Sace, an adorable Shih Tzu pet of my former work colleague, whose other dog, Pringles,  I've also painted before, 

Daily Sketch 113 - Older Creamy

This sketch took longer than usual. I was sick for a few days and it's only now that I finally able to finish it.  It's hard to draw with a runny nose.

In those sick days where I can't really draw,  I had been doing some painting art book reading and learned a few bits here and there from different tutorial videos online. I tried incorporating some of those bits here.  One of the things I'm learning is about observational skills - how to accurately draw and paint your subject's form and color.  I had been doing some visual measuring loosely before and the tips I learned from those tutorials helped reinforced it and also provided me with some focus.

So far, I'm satisfied with what I've done. I'd like to try doing some human portraits too as my next challenge, which I've  been avoiding.   But not for long now.

Daily Sketch 112 - Boomer & Fluffy Portrait

 

I wasn't feeling well when I started this sketch. A rough sketch was all I could manage yesterday. Today, I'm having a terrible cold. But this sketch needs to be finished. So slowly but surely, I worked on it till it's done. 

After finishing the rough sketch yesterday, I proceeded to clean it up by using a pen tool in Artrage, to create an inked drawing look.  I haven't really done much inked drawings before, so I take this as a good small step. I know it's not the same as using real pen and ink on real paper, but using a digital medium frees me from worrying about wasting art materials as I learn and inevitably will make mistakes.  I'm happy with what I've done.

I could have just left it at that, but I decided to add color to see how it would look. So with the inked drawings on the top layer, I added the whites underneath, and then glazed in some color  in blend mode for the tongue, inner ear skin, and eyes. 

Then for the background, I added some gradient color for the final version.

Daily Sketch 111 - Queenie Smiles

Here's Queenie in her extreme, cuddly cuteness.  A fluffy white body with a face that looked like she's wearing a mask, don't know what type of dog she was. I don't even remember who gave her to me. She wasn't my first dog. She could be one of my last. I'd like to have a new dog someday, but not just yet. I'm quite content with just drawing and painting dogs for now.

Daily Sketch 110 - Queenie

 

 

 

So it's my turn to sketch my own dog today. This is Queenie during her puppy days. She's small and fragile-looking, yet she's not afraid to fight with my other dog triple her size. She's in dog heaven now.

Daily Sketch 109 - Happy Huskies

 

My sketch for the day is these two adorable huskies,  Fluffy and Boomer, together.   If they're not annoying each other, they're quite content hanging out with teach other, or so I'm told.  For this sketch, and as with my previous sketches of them, I draw them in grey scale first, and the color added  later. Once everything's final, I add a noise filter to the whole image to give it some texture.

 

Daily Sketch 108 - Boomer Sits

 

 

Another Boomer drawing for today. He seemed well-behaved here. I reckon he got scolded here. Just look at that grumpy-looking face. Hehe.

Daily Sketch 107 - Boomer's Hula Hoop

 Boomer, my sister's other pet husky, seemed to want to play the hula hoop.  Or it could be that he thought it's a big chew toy. Whichever it was, this is just too cute that I just have to draw this as one of my daily sketches.  This is the second time I painted this dog. The first time was done in Photoshop, while this was painted using ArtRage 5.

Daily Sketch 106 - Fluffy Looking Silly

Another Fluffy drawing, a cute one.  She got caught and scolded for doing something naughty, and looked like this with a silly smile with ears folded back.
This sketch was done using Artrage 5 - my favorite drawing and painting application for my Daily Sketches.

Daily Sketch 105 - Fluffy Lounging

Having drawn and painted a few dogs already, I acquired a few painting techniques for the fur. I usually use either the eraser or the palette knife for the fur by earading or pullong out the fur at the edges.  And as a finishing touch, I added some noise filter to the final image to minimize the too-sleek look. 

Daily Sketch 104 - Fluffy

 

For the third time  I decided to paint Fluffy again.  I started drawing rough sketches yesterday, and continued to finish to completion one of the sketches, starting with this one.  More Fluffy sketches to come....

Daily Sketch 103 - Creamy Sketches

It's Creamy again!  These are from her puppy days. She's actually old now, and is still sad-faced. Sometimes, she seemed to smile when she sees me. (Or she could be just hungry).

These are some loose sketches from her old puppy photos.  Sketching loosely was the preferred way of drawing for animators, because the drawings seemed to have more life in them. Also because there are clean-up artists who would do the cleaning up of lines later on.

I remember being told by my supervisor to loosen up in my roughs. I used to be very clean in my rough drawings. I think I still do.  These sketches look deceptively easy, but it's not. Every stroke were slow, searching, and the process systematic.  I hope to someday churn this out real quick. But for now, I'm good with these.

Daily Sketch 102 - Sitting Creamy

 

Another sketch of Creamy. A different style this time. Minimal color and thicker outline. Not quite sure how to render this at first. But decided to just keep it simple.