I've been having a lot of trouble thinking of image ideas that I can work on to make finished artworks out of, so I've instead been mostly just drawing animals like horses and dogs (probably mostly horses) to try and improve my anatomy skills/knowledge. Today though, I drew some dragon thing:



It started out enjoyable enough when I was working on the head and wing closest to us, but the limbs were a pain...! I positioned them poorly, so they look stiff and awkward. I intended to make it look like it was cautiously walking forward or something, but I probably would have had more success had I tried to find images of dogs or horses walking so I would have known how to better position the legs... That hind leg closest to us feels like somewhat of a 'disaster' since it probably shouldn't be creeping forward while the foreleg on the same side is also moving forward. It probably would have been more successful had I made that hind leg stretch back behind it instead with the foot pointing straight down vertically to the ground. All things to keep in mind for next time, I suppose...!

I like where I was going with the design of the dragon, at least. I like its many spikes and the shape of its head and wing and stuff and how I did the spikes around its shoulder/thigh areas. I should draw more dynamic poses than just *in profile* though! Maybe I'd be a bit more inspired to do so if I drew some scenery for whatever creatures I draw to interact with.

Other than all that, I'm considering taking up the ol' Draw Every Pokemon challenge that some artists set out to do, only to get tired of it after the first 20 or so. I'd want to do it in a sort of speed painting way so I'd be working on my colouring skills and not spending a lot of time trying to create some sort of tight drawing before just slopping colour all over the canvas... I don't have confidence in my ability to draw all of them though (or even the first 150), but uh... who knows. It would at least be a good learning experience even if I didn't get through them all AND I wouldn't have to spend time trying to figure out what I should draw since I could just choose the next Pokemon on the list. Hmmm...!

Well, after weeks of... some attempts at colouring this, but mostly putting off colouring this, I have finished that wolf image to the best of my ability.



It just wasn't meant to be. I ended up disliking the lineless colouring direction I had taken since my shading looked sort of... flat or something. I ended up starting again, but instead doing a sort of sloppy cel style to colour it. The colours don't exactly have the feel I was originally going for, but at least I managed to choose something at all?!

I also wanted to add some cyan markings or something, but my attempts to design markings for it didn't look particularly eye-pleasing, so I just let them go rather than trying again and again to get them right. I really just wanted this image 'done' and was at a point where I accepted that this wasn't going to turn out phenomenally great, so uh... I suppose that made me feel less like applying effort to what I was doing. Unfortunately.

Even if this didn't turn out as well as I'd originally hoped, I'm sort of glad knowing it's at least presentable now and it no longer needs to lurk at the back of my mind as a piece of artwork that deserves to be but is not yet finished.

I really want to try to make a habit of practising more often. Daily, even. And when doing that, I want it to be a mix of drawing from photos and drawing from my imagination. So often, I just put off practising because I experience feelings of anxiety relating to drawing at all since I just assume I'll 'do badly' and it will make me feel terrible about myself for not being at a higher skill level and it bothers me quite a bit thinking that I could probably be a lot better than I am right now if I'd spent all that procrastination time actually drawing.

So anyway, I forced myself to draw some stuff today and I seem to do okay enough after I get past the initial rusty, warm-up phase. Amongst a bunch of boring sketches that I didn't save, I ended up drawing this (I used a new Photoshop brush I made last night too...!):



It's silly, that, because the Cotton Dragon is supposed to be more energetic and mischievous, but that thing's just... defeated and completely lacking any energy for life. I suppose it reflects how I was feeling when I started drawing it since I wasn't feeling too well about the less-than-great sketches that preceded it. I think those arms might be a bit too scrawny though.

After that, I decided to try to draw an animal I've not attempted to draw seriously before, so I chose a giraffe:



It was referenced from this photo. It was difficult trying to draw the folds in the skin and I'll admit that I was impatient with them and didn't try very hard to get them right. It was difficult trying to draw the spots on the giraffe so they'd distort with the skin folds and wrinkles and so on. I also seem to have drawn the giraffe's neck too long and big and there are some other inaccuracies with the body which probably could have been avoided better had I put a bit more energy into measuring body parts. Maybe next time...! I'll probably continue to draw things into the night and hopefully gain DELICIOUS EXPERIENCE POINTS. If life were an RPG, I might be more motivated to level up my art skills if I could see how much experience I was getting from each thing I draw.

For a long while now, I've been wanting to adjust my style of drawing dragons to one that really appeals to me... It's not like I dislike how I've been drawing dragons all this time, but I feel like I'm going in the same direction many others go when drawing dragons and doing that seems to cause me some level of emotional distress when I can more easily compare my own skill level to that of others just due to the similarity of style. It makes me more likely to think I'm 'not very good' and so on. That, and the sort of dragons that would appeal to me in games and things was different to the sorts of dragons I've been drawing. What I'd like to go for is a type of dragon that has noticeably large hands and feet, but thin forearms, a small chest, perhaps... A triangular head?

By which I don't mean I'd draw every single dragon ever exactly like that, but it's a style I'd like to be capable of. I made an attempt at trying to draw the sort of dragon I mean last night:



There are many ways in which I'm not satisfied with this, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I should make some more sketches from different angles and such to work out the body type I want, since I was having a lot of trouble drawing the torso and didn't really end up with what I wanted. It's also surprisingly hard trying to draw big hands and feet! I really need to practise that! Perhaps drawing paws and human hands more will help me with that, but it can be difficult trying to make a human-hand-like structure, but then thickening the fingers and putting them in a pose that looks realistic and uh... difficult, yes! I'm impressed by, if a bit envious of, people who can pull off those anthro hand-paws really well!

Anyway, I think next I'll make some sketches of dragons looking at them as if they were floating in the air with their bellies towards the viewer like uh... the leftmost dragon here, but with its head not pointing up like that. Yes! That's what I should do.

Oh, I also liked things like this old dragon sketch since it has the sort of forearms I like. I should study that image so I can perhaps recreate what I did there! And I felt like I was going in the right direction with this slightly more refined drawing, though it still has some features in need of fixing. I was happy with its head though.

Yes, I'm writing a whole blog entry thing just to say that tags are now fully-functional! Now I can finally do what I've been dreaming about for days: link to work in progress entries from the artworks in my gallery that they apply to! Ohyes!

I also added links in each entry to jump back to the top. I also still intend on changing the aesthetics of this blog thing a bit to make it more pleasant to the eye or something. Maybe I should also have a list of 'entries on this page' in that navigation bar on the right there...? So then you could just click on a link there and it would take you down to the part of that page the entry is on without having to scroll all the way down. Hmmm.