Character Sketches & Silhouettes

I did the silhouettes after the sketches.  They were much more enjoyable.  The time it took ranged from a sad 5 hours to "only" about 2 hours on my last character.  It took practice and you can tell from my silhouettes!  I really think the ones of my knight were the best (last character I did) because I had more practice.  I also realized I draw a lot slower if I don't have something in mind (no, duh) so after a while, I just took a scrap piece of paper and randomly draw stick/ball figures to visualize the pose before attempting to draw them on PS.  Things went a lot smoother afterwards!  

Ah, and how can I forget to mention that I struggled with getting my hawk silhouettes.  They were fun but a little frustrating.  At first all my hawks looked like pigeons.  Then I looked at reference and refined them a bit but they ended up looking like crows.  I took a break after struggling for way too long and decided to move on.  The next day, I went back to it and it was so much easier trying to pinpoint the mistakes and changes I needed to make.  (I also made my dad look at them because he has very sharp eyes when it comes to certain animals like hawks and tigers).

The first set I did was brutal.  Again it time ranged from torturing 5/4 hours to a little more than an hour on my last set.  It takes getting used to and at first I just focused so much on quality and fixing small errors that it just took so much unnecessary time.  Nearing the end, I just threw on whatever I thought of and only went back to fix details the next day.  I enjoyed drawing the eyes.

I spent around an hour just fixing and re-looking at things.  I know this took a while and I admit at the beginning it made me get a little impatient with myself but after some practice it went a lot smoother.  I'm still a newbie at this but I will practice more and more.  I remember, during the summer, I tried painting a drawing I hand-sketched and it took 5 days just picking colors and doing the flats.  I never even got to rendering!  Character Viz has helped me improved not only my drawing skills but also my mentality, especially my patience.  I know I have a long way to go because this is only the beginning :) and I will look back to this site one day and laugh and cry and maybe even admire the silly things I have come up with (yeah, you know that feeling when you dig up your kindergarten journal...hehe). <3