Drawing Strangers on the Internet: The Sequel

If you recall, in my last post about drawing strange people on the tubes, I mentioned that I had found two resources that were helping me practice a bit. The first one was a specific part of Reddit, and I neglected to mention the second one. Since I'm sure you were waiting with bated breath, wait no more!

The other really cool resource that I have been using to hone my meagre skills is a website called Selfless Portraits. The idea is that you submit your Facebook profile picture to be drawn by someone, and you draw one that is randomly assigned to you. The results are sometimes awesome, sometimes silly, and... well, sometimes it just doesn't work.

I'm not so great at likenesses, so I thought doing a few of these might be some good practice.

I am not really happy with this one, but doing the relief thing turned out to be way harder than I thought. My original idea was to draw him with a big creepy smile, a la A Clockwork Orange, but I think this is creepy enough.

This is definitely the one that I am happiest with, out of the portraits that I have done on this site so far. The face could be narrower, but I think the photo might be squashed, so it evens out. (That's what I am going to tell myself.)

This was the first one that I did, and man was I ever mad that my first one was a duckface. Turns out that they are really hard to draw, in addition to being weird looking!

And lastly, I of course must share the ones that others have drawn of me! I think it's a good likeness, no?

Drawing Strangers on the Internet

Hey, I'm still drawing! Occasionally! Look at that!

I decided to bust out the tablet a couple of days ago and fight with the drivers and wrestle with GIMP long enough to actually get something done, so maybe I will have some things to post.

I recently discovered a couple of really good resources for practicing drawing people. One of them is r/redditgetsdrawn (or r/redditgetsdrawnbadly, depending on how I am feeling) where people post pictures of themselves or their loved ones and people draw them. I've done a couple of these, and they are good fun. Not a ton of work, but good practice for working on either likenesses or styles, or likenesses in different styles. The next few images are the product of some of those adventures.

This one was a person (who was really wearing a puffy sleeved dress!) who asked to be made into a Disney princess. I make no claims to be an animator, but I gave it a shot.

I got adventurous with this one and tried out colouring Questionable Content style. Turns out it is WAY faster, but I still need to get the hang of cell shading. And making line art that makes sense.

The mods made this guy promise that he was not going to use the product of this thread for an album cover. It was all a dark background and super moody looking... So I just drew his glowery face and it turned out looking kind of like Zachary Quinto.

This one is probably my favourite, since it is adorable. The person asked for her and her "Majestic Unicat" to be drawn. I really felt that the cat's expression could only be one thing.

At A Loss

I want to write. It's not even that; I want to create something. I find myself constantly in a state of creative frustration where all I want is to put pen to paper and write something. It's not as specific as that, however; I would be as happy to write a song, or a poem or to paint or draw or sculpt, I just don't know where to begin. My muse (a concept that I am not entirely supportive of, but that is an aside for another day) has been disconcertingly silent for a long time now. Not only that, but I find myself often frustrated when I do set something to paper (or the applicable media) with the fact that I am not good enough at whatever it is I am doing to create the vision that I started with.

This creative frustration has been a sticking point for me for several months now. Is this something that other people come across? Do other people get accosted by the desire to create, but lack any idea as to what they should actually set out to do?

I have tried to start a bunch of projects, but none have yet turned out the way I envisioned them, and I am left feeling distinctly unsatisfied. I am supposed to be creating the artwork for a hypothetical children's book; maybe that will satiate my creative drive.

For now I have settled myself into a rut of reading often. I know that reading a lot does not make you a good writer, but I can at least direct my energy into absorbing a story and maybe learning something. If nothing else it keeps me from wasting my entire days on the mindless void of arguments and cat pictures that is the internet.

My Little Children's Show

After all the hype that has been happening about this stupid show, I decided to give it an honest try. I watched three whole episodes, thinking that there must be something to this show that is drawing all of these people in. Turns out that no, it is just a children’s show that has drawn an inexplicably large following of adult men from the internet.

And I like to draw while I watch television. There you have it.

Sad Green Fairy

He is sad because he is green. (But he is perfectly comfortable with his body type, thankyouverymuch.)

Up For Interpretation

So what do you think is going on here? I’m not telling the image I had in mind during its creation; how people interpret it on their own is too interesting. So, what’s behind her? (Or in front of her?)