Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Reflection on Weekly "Exploring Your Interests" Drawings

Over the course of this quarter, I've done all sorts of drawings for the "exploring your interests" assignment.

From Mistborn themed Totoro parodies,

to sketches of dolphins,

to commissioned coats of arms,

to chibi drawing lessons with my little sister, 

to watercolors of chickens giving each other questioning looks,


it's been quite the journey. Along the way, I've discovered that it's really hard to figure out new things to draw each week without just reverting to "I'll illustrate a Brandon Sanderson book!"

...Okay, I discovered a few other things too.

I got my first commissioned pieces this quarter (the coats of arms for the Pack of the Cosmere and the Newcago Court), and it was an interesting experience, trying to put together drawings based on a few comments I wished had been less vague. Doing coats of arms (I did three total) was a lot of fun. I got it down to an art by the third one: draw out a shield, list ideas for what should go on and around it, run google searches until I found an image I wanted to interpret, and draw the picture onto my paper.

Studying chickens was fun. For years and years I would go through phases where I would become obsessed with the idea of keeping some animal as a pet and do hours of research about it. Schnauzers, ferrets, cockatiels, munchkin cats, domesticated foxes, I studied them all. I felt like I was reliving that time in my life, doing all that research on chicken keeping.

And the chibis. Don't even get me started. It may have been better if I had never learned to draw them. Now I cannot. Stop. Drawing. Them.

All day, constantly, CHIBIS. I'm drawing random chibis, my friends and family as chibis (complete with that day's hair and clothes), the cast of any TV show I'm watching, characters out of books I remember reading, everyone becomes a chibi.

It’s kind of terrifying.

I love having time each week to just draw whatever I’m interested in. Even back in Art I, I would give myself an hour to work the drawings, rather than the 30 minute minimum. On some of my drawings, I ended up taking up to 2 hours. These drawings are incredibly fun, and I’ve really enjoyed having them each week.

17 comments:

  1. You did a great job exploring your interests, every piece you did looks different and I have a felling you enjoyed working with different things and you also went over your 30min minimum time to do it and you worked with it no matter the time it'd take. Great job!

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  2. You are a great artist and have cool interests. I wouldn't have thought of a chicken as an interest, but it make sense now! You fabulous and so is your art. You did a nice job talking about your interest. Keep up the hard work..

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  3. Looking at your drawings, it makes a person want to learn more about them and what inspired them. To me it makes me want to research more about your interests because they seem for fun.

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  4. I like how you tried to make all your drawings different each week. Sometimes it isn't bad for you to draw something that is similar to others.

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  5. GAH! These are so amazing! I love your dolphin sketches! They are amazing. And I love your explanation behind the drawings, they're super cool!

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  6. You did a really good job on every single on of your interests drawing. I really like the chickens and the dolphins, you did a fabulous job on the shading. Good job!

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  7. This is so great! All of the art is so different and fun! You really show your expertise in so many ways and with so many styles and techniques! The shading and styles are all very different but they all work very well! Awesome!

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  8. These are really good. It looks like you spent a lot of time on them. You did a good job with finding new interests. I think I like the one with the dolphins the best. It looks the most realistic.

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  9. You are amazing at drawing! I absolutely love the dolphins. I really like your style of art and I also love all of your ideas and explanations. Great job!

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  10. I'm really inspired by all the progress you've made! Stuff like this just wants me to stop whatever I'm doing and just do some art! I love how on like the dolphins you put them in different angles and really explored the dolphins. I also LOVE your last one with the mother hen. Your growing so much as an artist and I can't wait to see more from you!

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  11. I love all of these! I can tell you really like Mistborn, and I'll have to check it out sometime, because your Totoro themed drawing is adorable! I also love drawing my friends and family as chibi or anime characters, it's super fun! :D I think you're really talented and I love your work! :3

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  12. I love all of these! I can tell you really like Mistborn, and I'll have to check it out sometime, because your Totoro themed drawing is adorable! I also love drawing my friends and family as chibi or anime characters, it's super fun! :D I think you're really talented and I love your work! :3

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  13. Wow! I can tell that your interest have grown and are uniquely yours! The dolphins are amazing! I love how they turned out. I can tell that you love doing your art because you put a lot of detail into! Which is really awesome! I can't wait to see more art interest drawings from you! :D

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  14. You have a lot of different interests and you portray them really well in your drawings. My favorite one is the watercolor picture of the chickens because the texture of it looks so realistic. You did a great job talking about your interests and i can see that your interests have grown. Good job!

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  15. You are incredible at drawing. I totally understand learning to draw something new and then nonstop drawing it. Its addicting! Keep up the good work.

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  16. You are very talented! I love that all of these pieces really show your interests, and they all look great! Keep up the great work! I think it would be really cool if you threw in color to some of these, they'd really pop.

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