Watercolor of Enchanted Rock and some Figure Drawings

It's a sad day when you open up your watercolor palette and see that your paints are dry and crumbly. There was a time that the paint in my palette never dried because it was in use practically daily. Well, no time like the present to start some new good habits. Took today off to go plein air painting with a friend. Afterwards, I ate like a hog and passed out into a 2-hour food coma. It's a great day. :)

And these are from the Monday night figure drawing session. Figure drawing for me is sorta like the Hunger Games, out of every 12 drawings, only one comes out, and those seem like great odds to me. (I haven't seen the movie yet, but I hear it's "better than Twilight", which I'm not sure is a great way to sell me a movie.) I listened to a podcast interview with Glen Keane a while ago, and when he was showing off his portfolio, the animator who was mentoring him weeded out his portfolio picking out around 1 out of every 10 drawings. That's why you have to draw a ton, so you increase your chances. Of course the more awesome you become maybe it will be 1 in every 5 or 4. Wow, what a great day that would be huh?

Model's Picks

I usually filter my figure drawings myself, but this time I had the model pick her faves for me to post. Here are the model's picks!

hope you likey my drawings!
Tiff

Bunch of Figure Drawings

I paid off my car recently :) :) :), and instead of saving that money like a good girl should, I decided to put the money into my figure drawing budget. I'm thinking of it as an investment in myself. The better I can draw, hopefully the more valuable I can be to the company I work for now, and of course to whoever I work for later on in life. Yup, so I've been hiring me some models lately. They're not cheap,  but I would pay anything to be a better artist! I'd cut off my adorable little pinky toe. (Just give me a belt to gnaw on, and some hard liquid courage ((alkey-hol))).

just more practice

Dear Readers,

my blog has been super boring lately, with nothing but figure drawings. :\  I'm in such a hurry to get my "10,000 hours" to become a master, and I think that figure drawing is the key. The reason is that you're not staring at your paper thinking about WHAT to draw, you're just drawing. Hence, you get nice solid chunks of hours that are just drawing and not day-dreaming about what to draw. (day dreaming is great tho, i would love to be a master day-dreamer too.)

So I went to school for for 4 years, and have been in the game industry for 10. Why haven't I gotten my 10,000 hours yet? I think that school possibly steered me wrong because the majority of it was how to use software which is mostly obsolete now. (Ever heard of Autodesk Animator Pro? Macromedia Director? Excuse me while I barf into a paper bag. Ok I'm back.) And my career in games has all been 3dsmax like crazy. Even though I've been categorized as "artist" in all of my jobs, I rarely got to draw. All the drawing had to be done after work hours, which I admit I haven't been diligent at until I moved to Austin. I still get lax when I get busy at work, but it's absolutely no excuse. There will always be a reason to not practice: work, laundry, dishes, your favorite TV show is on, but I've resolved that life will just have to adjust around figure drawing sessions and not vice versa. I dont wan't to be a master when I'm 80, I want to be a master through my good years. :) I want to be as productive as possible.