Art Update

I've been meaning to do an update on my artwork for a long time, but I never had the time (and let's face it, the desire, it's hard!) to photograph my art.  However today the sun bouncing off the snow and coming in my French doors made perfect light for photographing my art!  Yay!

So the last time I shared any art with you was in July of 2014.  I've done a LOT since then (just procrastinating on the picture taking), so I want to share it.  I also took new photos of some of the old art in the better lighting.  The photos I took before truly were awful.  I'll share those here again, but if you want to see all of my posts you can check out the art tag (LINK).

Okay so I'll start off with the old graphite drawings from early 2014...

Graphite drawing of a giraffe.

I erased my signature for anonymity.

A sketch of Chrome I want to paint someday.

Another (awkward) sketch of Chrome.

Sketch of a dragon.

A cute, but not very good, drawing of Storm and Mac.

A drawing of my cat where I was practicing shading (not very well).

A drawing of Storm that is very flat, but I actually like it.

It would look good with more realistic shading.

Now here are some of my more current quick sketches in my sketchbook (yes I finally got a sketchbook; wish I'd done that a long time ago!).

An eye.  The lighting didn't turn out as well on this one.

A dragonfly. Could use some more work, but it's pretty cool.

This was a while back for a drawing challenge.  I hate spiders and it creeped me out the whole time I was drawing this so I didn't bother with shading.  I just wanted to be done with it lol.

I'm also getting back into using colored pencils.  :D

I have drawn in graphite most of my life, but I'd never tried other mediums until 2014.  I picked up charcoal for the very first time in July of 2014.  I had never even held charcoal, much less drawn with it.  I had no idea what I was doing when I did my first drawing...

A lion...

Then I did these two that I shared with you guys back in July...

I finally asked my friend for help because I knew something was missing from these.  She helped me a lot with value which is where I had the most problems.  The funny thing is we did it all through text messages haha!!  The most important thing to remember is to squint!  Squinting brings out the value.  :)

With some text instruction, after watching some Youtube videos and with a little practice I drew these (in this order).

This is from a picture a friend took in Colorado I think.

This is the first landscape I've ever drawn.

Growing up I never did backgrounds on my drawings.

A windmill.  The first building I've ever drawn.

A lion.  I love him! 

A fox kit biting mama's tail and getting dragged.  So cute!

I love being able to see the progress I've made!!  These next two really show my huge leap when I started understanding value better...

 A Marlin in July 2014.

 A Marlin in late August 2014.

The progress is incredible!  Once I trained myself to see value my skill improved in leaps and bounds!  I'm so excited.  I really enjoyed my artwork in 2014 and I'm continuing to practice in 2015.  I'm trying new mediums (more details on that later) for number sixteen on my 30 Before 30 list, but I've also gone back to my graphite, bringing my new understanding to it (charcoal really helped me develop my light, medium and dark values instead of the two tones stuff I had before) and my graphite is improving like crazy too.  I can't wait to show you the one I'm working on right now.  It has been a very long process on this one (yuck work schedule), but it will so be worth it.  I'm tempted to show it to you now, but I really want it to be finished first.  Anyway I hope you like seeing the progress as much as I do.  :D

Just for fun, which one is your favorite?