Note to Participants: if you are keeping a blog where you are posting all of your own work from this, link it, I will add it to the goals section
Okay so... like every year, this year my main resolution is to draw a whole lot more
But I always end up breaking it, and I feel it's because I'm not getting motivated enough.
You guys are pretty good motivation though...
So I propose a challenge, AC.
I propose a drawing a day till January 1st 2011.
This challenge starts on January 1st 2010.
When I say a drawing a day...it could be anything... a doodle on a napkin, a full blown illustration.
it can't be one giant drawing that takes you two weeks
it is as it sounds... a drawing a day.
Rules- You are to submit one drawing per each day this year. It can be as big or as small as you want, in any medium, any style. For photographers, one picture. It must not be something you already made. It shouldn't be something you did for school or work, it should be a drawing you made to help you reach the goals you set out to reach in this thread. (but if it doesn't pertain specifically to one of your goals, it still counts.)
- Do not submit your drawings each day. Saturday is the last day of the week, Make a post and dump all 7 drawings from that week into a post. Don't spoiler it.
- for the sake of sanity while loading this thread, keep the file size as small as you can. you're not painting the sistine chapel here. it doesn't have to be enormous.
- Because we're dumping on Saturday, if you really want to, draw all 7 on Saturday morning, no one will know... I mean at least you're drawing... but you'll die knowing you're a dirty cheater (hahah)
- Tam has to fully color at least one of the 365 drawings he makes.
Yay! How do I join!?!
Signups are finished, if you want to join in, feel free, people who start now will be added to a "late joiners" list.
What happens if I slack off and don't do my drawings?
Well... I mean, you're only hurting yourself. I understand that things come up, people have busy lives. This is a thread that's intended for people who are really serious about this though. So maybe you miss a few drawings, who cares... but I bet you'll feel pretty awesome if you make it to January 2011 and you have 365 drawings (or photos or paintings or whatever) to show for it. They'll be all neatly added to this thread too, it'll be awesome.
They can be 20 second gesture drawings... think small here... I'm not asking for fully rendered drawings, though it won't hurt you to toss some of those into the mix every now and again.
You will be subjected to the constant nagging of people in this forum though.
I endorse any and all nagging of people who are supposed to be drawing every day who aren't.
All in the name of improvement
I am going to try as best I can, schedule permitting to keep track of who has done their 7 drawings per week.
Anyone who wants to help me with this is a gem. It will consist of a simple tally of who has done their drawings, and will be posted at the end of each month. That will help others keep easy track of who is being a total slacker.
What About Crits?
I'd like to try to keep this thread as small as possible. I know that we'll bleed into another thread probably if people keep at it, and the more people comment, the bigger the thread will grow, but it'll be really nice for people to be able to easily look at their progress through the months, and mass amounts of text posts make that difficult.
I'll probably pare down unnecessary posts as the months progress.
For crits, if an artist wants crits on a drawing in particular, they should post it in the doodle thread or their own thread. I don't want lengthy discussions in here, it takes up space.
Crits are very important to improving... but so is actually getting off your ass and drawing. This thread is the getting off the ass part.
I Don't Know What to Draw!
Here are some assignments for people who are stumped:
Observational Drawing:
1. Put together a still life and draw it from 3 different vantage points.
2. Take a striped piece of cloth, arrange it however you want and draw it, paying attention to how the stripes move with the folds along the cloth
3. Take a complex object, like a bicycle, in your mind frame off just a section and draw that section, paying attention to composition.
4. Go to the local museum and do some drawings of various skulls and bones
5. Go to your local park or cafe and do gestural drawings of people
6. Find a local life drawing meet up or course and sign up
7. Do some gestural drawings from
http://www.posemaniacs.com
8. Cut a cabbage or other vegetable in half and draw what you see. pay attention to line variation
9. Draw only the negative space of a tree or chair (or both)
10. Take a trip to the zoo, draw some animals
11. Take a trip to the library, dig through some art books, or scour the internet to find some work that inspires you and try to mimic it. Pay attention to what makes it good.
Character Design:
(taken from "Prepare to Board" by Nancy Beiman)
1. Take a human character and transform it into an animal, showing one step in between
2. Make 4 numbered lists, in the first list put 20 different species (animals, human being, aliens..whatever) in the second, genders (male, female), third time periods (1400s, jurassic period) fourth age groups (infant, toddler, tween, teen, adult, elderly) Now using a random number generator (lots on the internet) pick random numbers from each list so that you're left with a species, gender, time period and age.
so for example, for one of mine i got kangaroo, male, roman period, teen. Now draw that character.
3. Create a pair of characters that contrast large and small
4. Draw characters that illustrate a single line from a nursery rhyme
Environmental Design
1. go to
http://wikitravel.org and click "random page" you'll get a random place. Do some research and come up with some sketches based on this place.
2. To add another dynamic to the above task, do a series of lists, one with time period, another with colors. use a random number generator, and from these lists, get a time period and a main color that you have to incorporate into the enviro
for example: Belize, 1400s, blue
3. Do another random list thing, this time, make a list of places (open space, mars, under the sea, antarctica), type of environment: (landscape, castle, room interior, bathroom etc) time period: (jurassic, 1980s etc)
so for example, I did one and got: open space, bathroom, 1980s. So you gotta draw a bathroom floating around in open space with 1980's stylings haha.
Posts
:^: = finished their week's worth of drawings.
= finished a month's worth of drawings (at the end of a month, if you got all your weeks done, they turn into this)
= participant dropped out
Agent Coleman :^::^::^:
Asamof the Horrible :^:
Beavotron :^::^::^:
Bebarce:^::^:
Bombardier :^:
Buckwolfe :^::^::^:
Campion
Crowleston :^::^::^:
Deelock
erisian pope :^:
Faded_Sneakers:(
Flay :^:
Frank (f87) :^:
glipher :^::^:
Godfather :^:
Iruka :^::^::^:
Jpeg:(
L.E.O.:(
Lyrium :^:
Man-oven Super-rock :^:
McGibs
melting_doll
misosoup:(
Moorkus :^::^::^:
Mully :^::^::^:
Mustang :^::^::^:
NakedZergling :^::^::^:
Nappuccino :^::^::^:
Natri
NibCrom :^::^:
Nic :^:
no_toast :^::^::^::^:
Orikae :^::^::^:
PierceNeck :^::^::^::^:
Projeck:^:
Prospicience :^:
PROX :^:
Richard M. Nixon :^::^::^:
Rolo :^::^::^:
Shiboe :^:
Shiekhan_boy :^::^:
Skelly B :(
Spookymuffin
Squidbunny
Tam :^::^::^::^:
Taya :^:
testmonkey :^:
Thane :^::^:
the_monarch :^::^:
Tomanta :^::^:
.Tripwire. :^::^:
Tynic :^::^::^:
Veritas:(
Late additions:
Slacktron: :^::^::^:
Participants' Goals
Agent Coleman
--- Goals:
1. Work on figure drawing, namely heads
2. expressions = better
3. overall drawing practice
Asamof the Horrible
--- Goals:
1. understand perspective/construction better
2. do gesture drawings
3. invent figures that arent totally stiff and dead looking
i have a bad tendency to just jump into the details without understanding the construction of stuff, i've also been ignoring bodies for way too long
Beavotron Daily Drawing Blog
--- Goals: More expressive figure drawings that show force and movement. Not perfectly rendered, just expressive, animated drawings.
More full compositions with backgrounds, not just characters floating in space
Branch out a little, try some new things.
Read all my technique books that I've got and actually apply the knowledge.
Bebarce
Bebarce's goal is to simply get started in drawing. His posts will be less frequent as he wants to start off slowly.
Bombardier
no goals given
Buckwolfe
--- Goals:
- To draw more full figures
- Work more on value and contrast
- Learn perspective
Campion
--- Goals:
be more dynamic in motion and perspective
Increase cuteness through expanding variety of styles in design and colour
That seems fair. I will also try doing some animating on the side.
All right, we're doing this! We're making this happen!
Crowleston
--- Goals:
The human body. I sure do suck at making it. I'd like to get better at that.
Dynamic poses. A lot of what I draw feels really stiff.
Color. I hate it in most cases, and that needs to go away.
Deelock
--- Goals:
1. Economy of line
2. Interesting concept design and storytelling elements
3. Increased variation in facial features and body types
4. More emphasis on environments and architectural design
5. Massive improvements with digital mediums
erisian pope (photography)
--- Goals:
1. Focus on black and white
2. Focus on color (not taking color pics, but focus on how color works in photos - See William Eggleston as well as contemporary Gordon Lewis)
3. Shoot some people (street, not portrait)
Faded_Sneakers
--- Goals:
1 ~ One sketch per day. I never just sketch anymore so this will likely be the hardest.
2 ~ One large scale Abstract per month.
3 ~ One full comic book format story, length not important, per month.
Flay
(Flay is doing music and has different deadlines than the visual artists) --- Goals:
Develop better time-management skills.
Become a better guitarist.
Overall improvement in drawing/design skills, but particularly in drawing from imagination.
Frank (f87) Frank's Daily Drawing Blog
--- Goals:
1. Character Concepts - Better Designs and concepts for characters as well as natural and dynamic poses.
2. Broader horizons - Animal anatomy, landscape studies, interior design and props.
3. Back to the basics - Carefully study basic proportions, perspective, anatomy and composition.
Godfather
--- Goals:
I'll start off with a simple quick portrait cartooning a day. That's about it.
If I happen to do any sturdy gestures, technical exercises or sketchbook work i'll post that along with said drawing.
The way I figure it, I won't really be taken seriously around here unless I start posting some actual artwork, so this would be giving things a fair shake.
Iruka
--- Goals:
1- Sketch of a concept for a character or environment piece to build a library of assets
2- Review of some basic anatomical principals
3- Overall organization of two different and cohesive portfolio
Jpeg
--- Goals:
Goals:
1. Actually commit to a drawing a day. (Motivation issues).
2. Interesting conceptualizing, particularly with characters
3. Environments in general
L.E.O.
--- Goals:
- draw a character everyday, this can be any character made up or from pop culture.
- throw some buildings/technical stuff into the mix.
Lyrium
--- Goals:
-Work on things like anatomy, lighting, and do drawings from life in an attempt to get more comfortable drawing real people and improve likeness
-Explore more interesting compositions in my more creative drawings
Man-oven Super-rock
--- Goals:
To increase speed.
To improve economy of line.
To enhance my social life to a point where drawing each day is unrealistic instead of extremely realistic.
McGibs
--- Goals:
I'm going to start a journal/diary thingy to help myself figure out how my brain works. It's been a long time since I've drawn stuff that comes from my heart, rather then from form and function (like a character design). Expect to see a lot of bizarre demon-looking manifestations of symbolism accompanied by incomprehensible written scrawl.
Should be a ride.
melting_doll
--- Goals:
1. Color
2. Backgrounds/environments
3. Animals
4. Lighting/shading
5. Dynamics (foreshortening and perspectives)
misosoup
--- Goals:
1. get a grip on entire scenes, backgrounds being a big thing
2. try to start realising my forms properly, no more ambiguous anatomy
3. start drawing people with clothes on
4. stop being so lazy!
Moorkus
--- Goals:
1. Draw every day.
2. Learning the basics, read some books on the subject, draw from life. Maybe one study / exercise per fun drawing or something along those lines.
3. I.. don't really know, I'm sure I'll figure something out once I understand the basics better.
Mully
--- Goals: 1 digital painting
1 canvas painting
and
1 self portrait (any kind, doodle-y)
per month
Mustang
--- Goals:
1. Stop with the sloppy rendering and finish shit properly
2. Gain a better understanding of colour, values and composition
3. Start getting a handle on force and movement
4. Become a better guitarist and musician (Guitar duel at the 2010 AC Xmas Dinner Flay!)
5. Improve my knowledge of musical theory and composition
6. Don't be such a dick all the time
NakedZergling Daily Drawing Blog
--- Goals:
1) to actually watch the "structure of man" dvds i bought last year
2) to read more art books
3) to practice land/cityscapes
Nappuccino
(napp is doing musical stuff) --- Goals:
-I'd like to push myself to be more creative
-Get better at my fundamentals (Scales and understanding chord changes from an achedemic standpoint not just "it sounds good" like I do now)
-and working my voice in to songs (also entails writing lyrics which is a whole new ball park)
Natri
--- Goals:
1. Use more colour in my drawings, and actually start painting with acrylics and oil
2. Practice perspective and backgrounds
3. Master the human figure so I can draw poses convincingly without reference
4. Update my art thread over here more often
NibCrom
--- Goals:
1. Absolutely destroy the boundaries of my color theory knowledge and my coloring skills.
2. Drastically improve my knowledge and understanding of the human figure.
3. Draw more from life, illustrating what I see, not what I think.
Nic
--- Goals:
-Improve my ability to draw both the male and female human figures
-Improve my skills with a tablet
-Build my colouring skills
-Work with paints and other physical colouring media
-Draw a lot more from life
-Work on composition
-Draw realistically as well as stylistically
-Carry a full illustration from the planning process to the finished product
-Develop a recognizable visual style that's engaging and interesting
no_toast
--- Goals:
1. Draw/Paint something every day
2. Finish 1 painting each month
3. Learn to better use color theory
4. Build variability to portfolio
5. Do at least one blog entry to my comic blog each month
6. Learn Flash/ActionScript to use as a tool for user interface design
Orikae
--- Goals: 1. practice facial expressions & head construction
2. practice environment concepts, indoor & outdoor
3. practice character design, reworking of old concepts & inventing new ones
PierceNeck
--- Goals:
I want to draw people, because my people look like monsters. So I just skip over the people part and draw monsters. Though I'm not sure where to start.
I want to learn to use different mediums. Currently I stick to mostly pen/pencil/paper. And sometimes color with markers. But that's about it.
I'd like to be able to do backgrounds and landscapes. Everything I draw is floating in a vacuum of nothingness.
Projeck
---Goals
1) Work on my observational drawing skills
2) Get better at portraying forms and such , giving my stuff depth
3) Draw more women + environments + other stuff
Prospicience
(drawing/writing/design/photo) --- Goals:
- Color (EVERYTHING ABOUT IT)
- Lines (not so damn sketchy, smoother, cleaner lines)
- Composition, goddamn my composition sucks right now.
- Anatomy
- perspective
- I'd also like to improve my writing quite a bit so I'm going to mix that into my drawing/design/photography.
PROX
--- Goals:
1. Remember my anatomy.
2. Improve my technical drawing skill.
3. Improve my form painting.
Rolo
--- Goals:
I am getting HARDCORE.
I will be working on bordering, calligraphy and graphic design.
As well as anatomy and figure drawing and maybe some mechanical design and perspective.
Shiboe
--- Goals:
Got a lot of learning to do, and want to section it so I don't get burned out (hopefully) and have a bit more structure that will keep me on task (hopefully). So every month will be focused on something-
- anatomy
- form/expressiveness
- faces
- color
- environment/perspective
- integration of everything for glorious larger weekly projects for the remainder
Shiekhan_boy
---Goals:
1 Keep myself consistent and be able to access my "artistic mode" more fully.
2. Be able to draw a proportionate body and faces.
3. study cloths and folds fully to learn shadows and depth more.
Skelly B
--- Goals:
~Sketch in pen.
~Use my markers more often.
~Have fun with this.
Spookymuffin
--- Goals:
-To complete the challenge (a drawing a day at least)
-Work on making my drawings not looking like kindergarten fingerpaintings
-Steal goals from other people in this thread
Squidbunny
--- Goals:
1. Draw more, jerk.
2. Work on anatomy, for God's sake.
3. Try to do more inorganic environments where I have to confront perspective directly instead of hiding behind organic squigglies.
This is going to hurt so good.
Tam
--- Goals: Due to academic constraints, my goals will simply be to complete one piece of art per day, be it a painting, some sort of design, or drawing. I hope to keep developing my linework and foray a bit further into painting.
Taya
--- Goals:
1. get better at shading
2. learn how to draw fabric folds/creases
3. improve proportions
I'm a beginner so I have to keep it simple.
testmonkey
--- Goals:
I have sort of already made a resolution to draw every day, and its probable that joining a group where i have to upload my drawings every day will prevent me from flaking out of this resolution by week 2, so can i sign up to this
Im just a beginner at the moment so My goals are simply to draw every day, and hopefully identify areas for improvement as i go on.
Thane
--- Goals:
1) Stop slacking and actually make realistic backgrounds
2) Stop slacking and put more effort into my colors
3) Finally learn how to translate pencils into ink and not coming out the other end with a completely different drawing altogether.
the_monarch
--- Goals:
1: Color Theory: I have Painting I this semester, so I hopefully will get a greater grasp on color theory.
2: Draw every day.
3: Draw more from life, not from memory.
4: Work more on shading and value.
Tomanta
--- Goals:
* Fill at least one sketchbook. I have too many mostly-empty ones lying around!
* Start doing color digital paintings (this is more of an end-of-year goal, not starting with it yet)
* Just general improvement. Especially anatomy, but I'd like to work on perspective, value, color... yeah. We'll see. I want to finally be able to consider myself "not a beginner" after years of drawing off and on (mostly off).
.Tripwire.
--- Goals: 1. I've been intending to do a Moe comic every weekday which would normally sound like sitewhore comic spam but Alex invited me to the thread so fuck off!
2. I also need to get better at drawing environments and backgrounds. And women. So that I can employ illustrations of each in
3. A graphic novel.
Tynic
--- Goals:
1. Get better at drawing humans
2. do lots of gesture drawings
3. more dynamic/active images
4. work on perspective
... this list could really go forever.
Veritas
--- Goals:
1. Finish my website and record progress on there
2. Get some work printed instead of letting it sit in files on the computer
3. Try to use one new medium a week, or at least do something without the computer.
4. Stop Procrastinating
But he looks like a Cabbage Patch doll so today I copied a baby from a Loomis book.
This is going to be a long year...
Quick someone post something better.
01/02/2010
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
At this point I'm only trying to draw more often than I already do. I'll work my way to achieving my more specific goals as I go along.
Steam handle: Buckwolfe
Finally whipped out a graphic for my brother's tattoo idea:
OC session with Bombs, Mully, and Mr. Firman
Jan 2: Cat lady (character design activity, transform a human character into an animal showing the step between)
Jan1: A drawing of me from a photograph.
Jan 2: Trying to get the female figure from photos on DeviantArt (basically the plan is to start with these, work on understanding anatomy, and then come back to these photos to see the improvement).
January 2
TaDA! I Got a few books for XMAS will be reading them soon!
Jan 2: warmup sketches
edit: oh, yeah. I'll be travelling next saturday, and may not have regular internet access for a few weeks after that. So don't panic if I'm not around, but I will put up a monster dump before the end of January.
Curse you eraser troll!
Saturday
Edit: Seeing how we're keeping track on a week to week basis who did their's and who did not, I've start an excel file to keep track of the weeks, so then we can see who did the most in the year for a fabulous prize of inflated self-esteem.
jan 2
jan 2 (late night with posemaniacs, 30 seconds -- first gesture drawings i've ever done)
figure drawing from a photo reference
2/1/10
Some hand studies
02/01
I work till 1am, so I'll probably have more drawings from work, but it's shopping time now!
The holidays really have me phoning in these first two. They can only get better.
01/01: Spent about 5 minutes trying to sketch the cats, who wouldn't hold still for 5 seconds:
01/02:Some squash:
Crustier photo study
Jan 1. I fell in love with Molotov's paint markers and did couple of pieces with those. This is from my gf's new black sketchbook (a collaborative effort).
Jan 2. Small astronaut dude on my sketchbook
Jan 2nd - Quick Cat study:
Jan 2 (wont have a chance to finish it today)
01-02: Some sketches while watching something off of Netflix. I'll probably do a lot of these, but I'm leaving what I was watching vague because I'd rather people figure it out on their own (or not).
I'm also still trying to figure out the best way to scan pencils on my scanner.
Jan 2
http://www.mediafire.com/?gf15izmnmiy
*ninja*
And a comic I've been working on for a few days now...
010110
010210
01/02- Quick studies
January 2, 2010
So many issues to work on, this one actually took quite a bit of time and effort even though it looks very simple, I wanted to have something proper to compare with at the end of the year. But hey if I learn how to draw feet and clothes I'll have improved
These aren't much to look at, but they're little sketches for painting ideas I have, trying to find better compositions. Some I'm feeling okay about, others not so much.
E: aw, I'm not on the progress list :C
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
when I get it lettered, I'll drop it into my own thread for crits.
2010 01 02
also holy shit 20100102 is a palindrome date!
Here is a sketch I did for an upcoming strip where the main character is smashed against a glass window. Any crits? Thanks.
And the object of the character's affection, A scarf that carries the colors of a certain lightning-scarred boy's school house.
~Jeremy Clarkson
don't have a scanner handy, took webcam pics
new year's day was a complete loss due to drunken debauchery, so i drew on the 31st instead, a guy with a rad pleather coat
and today's, a guy with rad hair, he was like a lion
frazetta painting i've been copying (on iscribble) for a while now. did a few hours yesterday (just about finished, woohoo!)
1-02-10
some loomis studies i did today, tried to block it as simply as i could out to understand a little bit better
My Portfolio Site
I just have the rhythm track down now so it might not sound all that different to someone who listened to the original.
http://www.mediafire.com/?jymzqn5n2zb
01|01 -
01|02 -
01|03 -
I'll probably be drawing more later today, but I have to atleast make it look like I got some work done...
Erasing is for pussies, so I just left the mistakes in there and move on. Besides, carbon pencil is a pain in the ass to erase on newsprint.
I didn't draw this on the plane, but dammit I liked it so i'm going to post it anyways: