Day 118.5 A Little Boat

I really didn't want to have to start a drawing so late tonight, but I know I can't do anything tomorrow because of the wedding I'm attending. I'll have two drawings to do for Saturday, so keep an eye out for those. See you soon!

Day 117: A Toy Plane

Today I drew a plane. It's purple because I like purple. No other reason, really.

Tomorrow I'm going to go out to find a dress for the wedding I'm going to Friday (I have like one dress, and it's too cold out to wear a short dress). I also have some other girlie type things to do, so I might not have a lot of time to post. Worst case scenario: you wont see me until Saturday. Hopefully it wont be that bad. See you soon!

Day 116: Rubber Ducky!

I love the rubber ducky. I think my love started with Ernie from Sesame Street. His song of his rubber ducky made me love these little guys. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about check out this video I found on YouTube: Rubber Ducky Song!

Day 116: Come and See My Yellow Submarine

You'll never guess which Beatles song I had stuck in my head today. That's right, "Help". No... wait.. that's what I need after hearing this song over and over in my head. "Yellow Submarine" is not the Beatles greatest song, but  it is the only one that's inspired a drawing for my blog. What does that say about my own mental health?

Day 115: My Piggy Bank

I drew a piggy bank today. I'm going to imagine it's mine and is filled to the brim with gold coins. This imaginary piggy bank of mine will make me rich!

The Lady Bug Finished

Here is my ladybug illustration finally finished. I want to keep working on it, but a little voice inside of me is telling me to move on to bigger and better drawings. I hope you like it.

Day 114: A New Car!

I've never been too picky about my cars. I just want them bright, shiny and something that can go really fast. Now that I'm an adult I'm supposed to add in things like: has seat belts, power steering and wont break down every few months. Boring! I should be able to pick out cars like I pick out clothes... buy everything that looks good on me. I know I could fit this car buying into my budget. I'll just cut out the food bill (husbands are okay with not eating,
 right?).

Day 113: Pull Toys

I had a terrible day yesterday. Well not terrible, but terrible for posting. I was just tired and run down all day. I did work on some art, but when I'm tired I have trouble doing much of anything. Know what I mean? In any case I'm coming back today in full force. Two pull toys for your enjoyment here. I never had any quite like these as a kid, but I remember loving pull toys.

Which do you prefer? I love the shape of the puppy, but the colours of the ducky. I think if I were a kid I may have picked out the puppy as a toy because it was a more familiar shape.

Just a heads up for next week. I will probably not be able to post every day. The plan is to visit my nan-in-law Wed. and go a wedding Fri. Of course I need to go out and get a gift yet for the wedding (eep don't tell the bride or groom). Now I have to go figure out what I'm going to draw tomorrow!

Day 111.5: Domo Arigato

I was planning on shading Mr. Robot here, but I've just been caught up in so many things today. So instead of putting off the post until the morning I'm posting him now. Enjoy!

Day 110: Bring on the Toys!

Lately I've been trying to figure out what I should be drawing while I'm catching up with these illustrations. Finally, today I have my answer: TOYS! I know it's a silly thing, but I work better if I have a theme of something to work on. Especially a theme that I know I can continually create. Also, these toy images will be good because some of them may end up in future illustrations. Yes I'm being overly excited like this, but I've had too much coffee today and I'm in a good mood!

The first toy drawing is a top. I was going to go in and shade it, but I like how it looks now. Not sure yet what I'm going to do for tomorrow, but I have lots of ideas.

Day 109.5: Angel Fish

I love the colours of the Angelfish. They are so bright and beautiful. If I had a big aquarium it would be filled with these little guys.

I created a new page on Facebook mostly for my WIP. Not a lot of action there yet, but take a look if you're interested: http://bit.ly/cRLa4t. If you prefer Myspace you can find me here: http://www.myspace.com/daniduckart. Right now I prefer Facebook, because most of the people I know are there. If I get to know a lot more people on Myspace I'll be sure to spend time there, too.

Day 108: An Annoying Cat

It may seem at first glance that I did almost no work today for my blog. Most of my work has been done on the illustrations I need to catch up with. I was about to work on a drawing when my cat jumped on my lap (she rarely jumps on my lap). So for the past 10-15 minutes she's been rolling around purring on my lap (probably wants something). I decided to do a quick drawing of her. She absolutely refused to stay still and now I'm covered in her fur. She's so annoying sometimes, but I love her.

It's been a while since I've posted any group sketches so here are the sketches from weeks 12-14:

Hopefully I'll be able to post the Ladybug final Illustration soon. The Ant and the Grasshopper, and the Spider and the Fly are underway as well. 

108.5: Princess

I had hoped to finish this painting today. The thing that the little girl is carrying is Humpty Dumpty. I did the drawing some time ago and I wanted to finish it in colour. I didn't finish it partly because I had to set up the Wii so my husband and parents could play his new Wii resort. A couple of hours went by and now I'm too tired to work. In any case the hair is almost done. ^-^

Day 107: The Tattoo

I created this tattoo I really liked for a friend and I realized I never really shared it with anyone else. The colouring is pretty basic because I used the dodge/burn tools for shading. I'm not big into creating tattoos but I think I did a fair job. My friend wanted it to reflect who she was, so this is what I came up with:

Day 106: Leafy Outlines

Now that I have my new computer I can finally start working towards catching up on my illustrations. Today I did some sketches of plants I wanted to incorporate into my ant and grasshopper illustration. They don't look like much now, but soon I'll get them looking good.

Day 105.5: It Was A Ladybug

I meant to post sooner today (April 14th), but I was so busy. It was my husband, Peter's birthday. There was cleaning today, last minute shopping and dinner at the keg. He got a game for the computer, so that cut my time a little short as well.

My drawing today was a bit unexpected. I started out drawing a ladybug. The drawing didn't want to be a ladybug. Far be it for me to make a drawing be something it doesn't want to be. So now he's a fairy bug. He's kind of cute, but not quite what he was meant to be!

Day 104.5: Birth of a Grasshopper

Instead of doing more than one image for today and yesterday's post I'm going to do a progression of images so you can see my process. First I research the type of grasshopper I want to draw. In this case it's a Mormon cricket. I found out these little guys are actually grasshoppers and known for their steeling (which works into the illustration I'm making. All the research I did was on the internet. I looked at several different images and started drawing. 

This first drawing was just of your average grasshopper. I didn't realize at this point that I would be drawing a Mormon cricket. I switched steeds and went with the Mormon cricket not only because of it's criminal intentions, but also because this grasshopper is more squat and has smoother features. The smoother features and fatter body worked really well with my style.

The drawing on the left was very close to my final illustration. The lines here were still loose, but more defined so I knew where to draw my lines. On the right is the final line drawing. I used the pen tool to create the lines so it has a smoother overall look. I could have drawn the lines freehand, but they wouldn't have been as smooth. Insects require a smoother line in my opinion, so that's what he gets. Even if he doesn't like it. This guy will be in my illustration later entitled the grasshopper and the ant.

Day 102: And Now For Something Completely Different

Though my goal right now is to work in the styles I'm going to be using in my children's portfolio I like to branch out and try other things. I like designing characters that are rendered really well and look like paintings. I don't have the practice in to do them quickly yet. I'm also working on refining my skills.

The place I usually go to get ideas is www.conceptart.org. Right now they are doing a Wizard of Oz in their Character of the Week. I haven't finished yet (and may not before their deadline), but I'm still going to show you my goth Dorothy as my sketch for today. If I do get the chance to work on this and finish tomorrow I'll be sure to post it (but that will count as a sketch too, because it's very involved). If I don't finish tomorrow I'll try to get it done somewhere down the road (along with all my other piles of sketches) so you all can see the final piece.

Edit: My computer screen is really dark (even at the lightest settings) How does this look on your computer? I want it to be dark, but if it's too dark I'll bump up the brightness. 

Day 101: A Stupid Hat

This is another drawing inspired by Edward Lear:

There was a Young Lady of Dorking,

Who bought a large bonnet for walking; 

But its color and size so bedazzled her eyes, 

That she very soon went back to Dorking. 

~Edward Lear

Day 100: A Yellow...Um...Thing

I honestly didn't know what to draw today. Maybe I'm a little burnt out. I didn't want to not do anything, because then I'll feel super pressured tomorrow to do two drawings. So here is a yellow bear cat thingy. Hopefully tommorrow will be a bit more ... um not yellowish.

Day 99: Toto

I'm working right now on a drawing of Dorthy from the "Wizard of Oz". I'm not really that far on it, and it's one of those things that I might never finish. I knew that I wasn't going to get it done for today, so I decided to do the next best thing - I drew Toto. I didn't want to spend too long on him so this is a quick sketch of the little guy. I hope you like him.


I know I'm behind at showing sketches. I really need to move the files from my old computer to this new one. I hope it wont take too long before I can get things moved over. 


I'm off to see the Wizard er Dorothy now. I'll be here again tomorrow!

Day 98: A New Computer

Yesterday I picked up my new computer monitor. Yesterday was a busy day so I didn't get a chance to hook everything up until late (I also didn't get a chance to do any drawing yesterday). This first sketch is kind of a left over from Easter. I had done a loose sketch of a similar bunny. After drawing the bunny I decided to add what the bunny was looking at.

You must be at least this tall to eat these carrots.

I've been running around doing things for most of the day. So after I did the bunny picture I was completely lost at what to draw. I just started playing around with my pen tool and I got this cute mousy thing out of it. 

I love this new computer. The monitor might actually be too big now... no, they can never be too big. Hopefully doing my artwork will be a lot less stressful now!

Day 96: Bedtime Dreams

I think one of my biggest reoccurring problems is sleeping too much. I love snuggling in my bed and I love the wild and fun dreams I have. I'm pretty good about getting up early if I get on a schedule, but when I get sick I tend to go right back to sleeping too much. Also, these late nights working on the computer don't help either. Even if I'm not drawing I'll stay up too late doing other things on my computer. So here is me, in bed sleeping. In real life I'm a bit bigger...  

Wish I was here.

Confessions of an Artistic Mind

I will be doing a sketch for today, so don't worry about that. I wanted to reply to a comment made by Gra in reference to my artwork. I was going to comment back, but I think it deserves it's own post. Gra is this really cool guy I met through having this blog. He's an artist as well. He works in traditional media. I love his use of colour and the vehicles he draws are a lot of fun. You can check out his blog here: http://elkart51.blogspot.com/

 ElkArt51 said...

Love the simple lines dani. I can't get my complicated head to draw uncomplicated pictures lol. xx gra

In all honesty, Gra, I have spent so many years trying to make my artwork more complicated. I was always looking for ways to do more detail. Asking, "What little things can I add to this to make it better?".

It was my computing power that lead me to start doing less complicated drawings. I think it was a much needed change for me. Partly because I need to work on form before I put in all the details and partly because I lacked focus. I've not done artwork like this for so many... actually I've never done artwork like this.

In art school I usually had a live model to work from. Before I go any further I would like to say that live models are really the best way to learn how to draw. My problem was: I couldn't think past that live model. What made it worse was I hated drawing anything from life except the figure. Flowers were about the only exception to this rule. Pictures were okay, but I had trouble looking at a picture and making it my own... even if the photo was something I had taken myself (which was usually the case)!

I was supposed to do sketches every day for some of my classes. I was terrible at that. I'd do really good some days, and other days I'd do all the sketches for the week in one day. Usually those sketches weren't very detailed, and none of them reflected me. When I finished with the classes that required me to do sketches every day, guess what? I stopped doing daily sketches altogether. Sketches were weekly at best, and usually only done because I couldn't figure something out on my substrate.

From the lack of drawing to the overly complicated drawings I really hurt my chances to become a really great artist then. Now I'm hoping this new procedure of drawing every day will help me out. I believe creating simple drawings to start will help me when I move on to more complicated drawings. It's a struggle sometimes to do these simple drawings, and sometimes they take more time that a more detailed drawing would take me to do. I hope to keep working and improving my methods. If only I could do the same with my writing. Oh well... you can't have everything.

Day 95: A Peep on Easter

Of all the sugary, teeth rotting, calorie filled Easter treats: the peep is my favourite. Or at least it was my favourite when I was a child. I haven't had a good peep in years. In celebration of the peep I created this little drawing:

Even from the beginning 

Leonard had trouble fitting in.

Have a good Easter everyone!

Day 93.5: Bunnies and Beans of the Jelly Kind

After hours and hours of work I've finally finished those silly bunnies and their shower of jelly beans. I tried to put too much texture into this illustration too early and I ended up making more work for myself. I think I could have spent another eternity on this one, but I have to make myself stop before I muck it up! I hope it's as good as you pictured, Debbie.

Happy Easter!

Day 92: Three Birds

I know I've been really behind with my drawings, so today I decided to catch up with three drawings of birds. They were planned to be a little more Eastery than they look. It was also going to be two birds and a bunny, but the bunny went on vacation so I had to find another bird. Also you should know that the birds kept fighting (so I had to separate them.). Now I'm all caught up with my daily sketches. Hopefully I can do some detailed illustrations soon! 

I'm Back! (Sorta..Kinda..Not Really)

Moving took more out of me than I expected. Trying to pack and move everything in one day is not something I recommend to anyone. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm here, but I don't have any artwork to show yet. I'll try to have something to show before the day is over.

I did get my new computer in the mail, but the monitor wont be here until Easter Monday. I've had all kinds of nasty April Fools jokes being played on me this year!  I can't use the new computer even with an old monitor. It gets into Windows and I get a white flickering screen. Hopefully it's just the monitor!

I have a lot of work to do so I'll say goodbye for now. I hope everyone is enjoying the Holidays.