Time for big cats. It's a head study of a tiger. . It won't be enough for me to just sketch this in greyscale. like in my previous cat heads. It is such a bright-colored animal. So I glazed some bright orangey color that tigers usually have. As for the stripes, inking it with the pen tool seemed appropriate,
and then scraped it with the palette knife tool to achieve
some fur texture and then blended it to soften it after.
More feline cuteness.... cats that seem to be laughing. These are copied from cat photo references,
and it's amazing how cartoon-like their expression looks.
The many faces of a cat -- the innocent look, the diva look, the sleeping-baby look, and the vampire look. One moment it can look so sweet and cuddly, then another moment it can look cold and scary. Just a black and white pencil sketch for today.
It's easy to anthropomorphize this cat. With those lazy pose and blank stare, I only had to add a dark background and some lighting, then this lounging cat suddenly evokes a feeling of drama as if it's acting. So I entitled this sketch as Drama Cat.
After getting used to drawing dogs for weeks, this sketch almost didn't happen. Because I was
sketching another dog instead of a cat like I said I would. Silly me. After
realizing it, I quickly shifted to drawing this cat, whose looking blue.
So here's Daily Sketch 117 - Cat Blue.
In the previous post, I said that I'll be focusing on learning the art and techniques of digital painting, specifically using Photoshop. This plan would definitely affect my daily sketching routine.
So today, I was originally planning to just do a quick sketch of a cat, and be done with it so I can focus on my main study of Photoshop. I used Artrage which is still my favorite drawing app. However. I was having fun, so I decided to just continue and finish it.
So here's the final sketch.
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.
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,
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.
Another Boomer drawing for today. He seemed well-behaved here. I reckon he got scolded here. Just look at that grumpy-looking face. Hehe.
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.
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.
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.
