October Challenge - Part the Second

 Continuing on from Part the First...

Unfortunately, I've fractured my finger which makes typing tricky... so it's going to be mostly just the pictures with limited commentary... 

Amanda watching TV

Amanda Webex work meeting

smashed finger. Ow.

Icing Smashed finger

It's how it FELT!

For the rest of the week I mostly worked on maps and tokens I could upload and make use of on Roll20

Mining Facility on one of Saturn's moons

Down Below.

Character Portrait

Another Character Portrait

I tried to make some simple re-usable "blanks"

Flipped it for some variety. 

Filled in they looked like:

Infected residents of the installation. 

More infected 

Whoops! infected scientists

Finnegan helped me with this one. 

Character portrait from Wrath & Glory

Character portrait

fixed character portrait... 

I didn't get a drawing done everyday - but I got more than ten done over the last ten days because a few days I did MORE. 

Eleven more days. Going to try and get one done each day. 

October Challenge - Part The First

 Orignially, as I'd planned the September Drawing-From-The-Masters Challenge, I had a nebulous plan to continue on into October with MORE ART. Specifically I'd planned to participate in Inktober - as I've attempted to do in previous years - and many friends of mine have been very into it for the last decade...

But as October arrived, the plan for EXACTLY what I was going to do in September hadn't really congealed at all, it was still very... nebulous... at best... I was kind of burned out from the September Challenge. (I mean, it took me three days to finish the final piece off!) 

Then I took a couple of days off to sort out exactly what the hell I WAS going to do... and... to be honest, I STILL haven't come up with anything concrete!? I wasn't thrilled with the Inktober prompt list (and a number of my friends that HAVE done it in the past are pointedly NOT doing it this year for a variety of reasons...!?). Also, I really had fun working with COLOUR - specifically all the experimenting with Watercolour pencil and marker and a bit of Gouache I did through September and kind of wanted to keep going with that... And now there are just so many copy-cat October challenges: Artober, sketchtober, Faetober, witchtober, it just goes on... Keira's decided to do Faetober (you can see all her drawing on her instagram: Kerifuffle )

So I don't really have any SPECIFIC goal or Challenge in mind for October other than Just Keep Making Art (try to do it DAILY PRACTICE!). 

On teh 5th and 6th I made a couple attempts at self-portraits. This was the least awful, so I'm only posting this one... It's a thing artists do, not out of any sense of vanity (at least not in MY case) but just to study and actual person and try to make a drawing/painting that actually LOOKS like that person. It is HARD. And Heartbreaking to utterly fail at it... and, in the case of a self-portrait, only ONE heart is being broken. 

Also on the 6th... Carrying on in the same sketchbook as the September Challenge - and the same Warhammer 40,000 theme - but with an illustration of my own... Noise Marines! 

STILL more Warhammer 40,000 themed art... 

So... like... six months ago when all the COOL kids were doing this "Six Fan Arts" thingie (drawing six pictures of characters you are a fan of), I thought I'd jump in on that action and asked friends and followers on a few different social media platforms for suggestions, and my friend Orion suggested I draw Leman Russ - Primarch of the Space Wolves.... or... at least I HOPE he meant the Primarch and NOT the Astra Miliatrum tank named after him... boy will I feel silly if he meant the latter... Anyway, I never got around to doing ANY of the suggestions... until now...

On Thursday, the 8th, I decided to go out for a bike ride and to some sketching out-of-doors (as there likely wont' be too many opportunities to do so shortly!) 

Here's what I came up with - some fall colours along the Meewasin Valley, alongside the South Saskatchewan River, which rund through the heart of Saskatoon. 

lacking any other ideas I went back to the suggestions I had for the SixFanArts challenge and did this one is for my good friend Woody, who asked that I do a picture of Roy Batty from Bladerunner.

And that's it for the first thrid of October... 

September Drawing-From-The-Masters Challenge

 Though the month of September I challenged myself to draw/paint a picture ever day. I decided to try "painting from the masters" - copying the work of another artist. In this case I ended up copying the works of John Blanche. This is more thoroughly covered on one of my Other Blogs. 

All of the pieces below are copied from John Blanche illustrations copied from The Emperor's Will - Agents of the Imperium (pictured above).  I really LOVE his style - there's kind of a frantic rawness and intensity to these illustrations that, for me, masterfully conveys the grim-dark reality of the life in the 41st millennium. I should say, just to be 100% clear here (because, as an artist, intellectual property rights of of great importance to me), the original illustrations are © John Blanch and/or Games Workshop and my studies  were done purely for my own private entertainment and education purposes and are presented here simply to share with the community a creative thing that I did. They are not now, nor ever will be, for sale. I do not take commissions of any kind. 

Well, that's it. It was a fun project. The plan WAS to continue on with daily drawings through October... but... that plan is currently in flux... for... reasons... I'll try to post what I'm working on, periodically, throughout the month. 

As I said, these were originally posted on my Gaming Blog through the month and there are a lot more process pictures and chatter about what I was tryign to do. If you're intersted in seeing/reading more about what I was doing, check those out:

September Challenge - Part One

September Challenge - Part Two

September Challenge - Part Three

September Challenge - Part The Last

Anyway, if you found your way here and read all of this, why not drop me a line in the comments below, so I know I'm not totally wasting my time posting all this crap for NO ONE?!

Thanks!