20 feline heads :)

 I eventually finished my 20 feline heads. The point was to try and see how a more narrow and meaningful practice would work. It worked pretty well actually. Drawing was so much more simple when you had a certain goal in mind. It was much easier to just sit down and draw when you already knew what you would be doing.

When I drew the very first head it was painfully obvious how rusty I was after spending a while not drawing. Then with the second head things were already going a lot better. While drawing these I quickly learned how to spot the basic shapes and drawing the shapes and the angles became easier. I also learned to pay attention to little details like the pronounced and high cheek bones of felines.

 I'm aiming to use this study on a certain work but since there are a few things cramming themselves onto my schedule, these will have to be benched for now. Although I'm very jaded with art contests, I decided to participate on DeviantArt's watercolorists - group contest themed 'Transitions'. This is a reference to the change of seasons, migration of birds etc.

Exited about my feline heads I decided to use this same study method when I started designing my competition work.

I started searching for images of whooper swans and I paid close attention to the shape of their heads. I also made a couple of thumbnail sketches.

I wanted to draw one of the swans with it's wings open so I did a few gesture drawings to capture the movement and shape of a swan.

After a while of studying I drew up a rough sketch. Because this will be made entirely with watercolors I tried not to refine it too much. I will transfer the lines onto watercolor paper very faintly and then I'll try to whip up the rest with using colors.

All in all I'm pretty happy with this technique. It felt a lot better than trying to do everything at once. For the background I looked at some watercolor works of meadows and fields to see how other artists have depicted them. I also wanted to create a feeling of a story in the picture so I drew the swan couple looking at the distant bird formation. One of the swans is already stretching it's wings, ready to join the other migrating birds.

The aim is to start painting today.

InkTober

 InkTober is already on full swing especially on Instagram. At first I was planning to participate but then I realized that I really don't want to force myself to do something just for the social media. I don't like drawing with ink and I also don't feel like forcing myself to do something finished every single day and then try to quickly upload it online. Right now I just want to simply be and think about what I want to do and how in my own pace.

A lingonberry that I drew with InkTober in mind. I'm very happy with this and I finally got to try Strathmore Mixed Media Tan - paper. The experience was rather interesting and this paper also scans beautifully. This was done with watercolor pencils, colored pencils and Pentel Pocket Brush Pen - ink brush pen.

Mass Effect Coloring Book

 I also decided to finally dig into one of my newest coloring books. My only complaint about these two books is that some of the drawings are so stylized that some of the characters don't really look like themselves. But the pictures are still amazing and the paper turned out to be of very high quality although it first seemed frighteningly smooth.

I eventually chose a picture with Geth Troopers and a Geth Colossus. For some reason this picture was screaming: Therum!

This picture is still far from finished but I'm pretty done with the sky, mountains and Colossus.

And of course one needs to listen to some fitting music when coloring this: