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Takod-rakul

Decided to try pushing my current skill limits again. Usually I dedicate some time a day to draw one thing, move on to the next in my draw every day challenge, and rarely look back. This made up days 228, 227, and 211.

Here is where 211 left off.

Back on day 211 Takodrakul was more directly Emrakul inspired. Returning to the idea it went in a different direction. The moon is heavily inspired by Ina's, not that I expect anyone to notice without prompting. The dark clouds above the "moon" was inspired by an eyebrow. The whitish clouds around the moon symbolic of the whites of her eyes.

For the "stars", they are a mix of white, gold, and purple feathers representing her wings.

Felt good to "finish" something.

There is much room for improvement. I still wonder if I resort to the painterlyish stuff because I actually prefer how it looks or because I find it easier to hide some (clearly not all) the issues.

As I write this, the last place I'm posting it because I'm going into a lengthly self evaluation, I'm realizing how much the halo does look off. I really should have remembered to adjust its perspective.

Maybe I should start putting "finished" works in a time out. Where I wait a day or two before posting them. Make any last adjustments.

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202

Day 202 practice. Tried combining grayscale practice with referencing/copying part of Alfons Mucha's Gismonda piece.

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July to August-ish update.  Was almost two months behind with this and didn’t see a clear breaking point in practice styles.  This month I divided the sections by what was going on.  I didn’t make sure things were in chronological order or any sort of order besides the grouping.

Due to the file naming scheme I used, they are roughly in newest to oldest.

Grayscale

I intended to do more of this in Julugust.  Following, not closely, advice from Pikat’s video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWTcTUNXcOg), I wanted to try doing more grayscale practice.

These are in reverse chronological order demonstrating the personal road blocks I ran into.  When I used Film Grab I wanted to document the source, include both the original and work side by side, etc.  The first one, “You Won’t Be Alone”, had the new passion behind it.  The second, “Inside the Yello Cocoon Shell”, saw me racing to get the daily art done.  Finally ending with me just going off of my Win 11 computer’s lock screen image. 

This is something I do want to do more of. 

Sketches with References

I probably should note them.

201: I was trying to sketch Halbernacht from Twitch while he was streaming.  I only got this far when the stream ended.

198 and 180 are my Final Fantasy 14 character-ish. 

197 was using various pages from “Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Deluxe Edition Vol. 4”

190 and 191 were my Jada Mega Man figures.  In the box and lighting it looked like Mega Man was a really old man.

160 was from an anatomy book I currently can’t find to give the title of. 

Middle bottom is “Wuk Lamat” form FFXIV in the one Emet-selch scene. 

The rest I can’t recall, but I know my art tendencies at this point.  There is a certain “reference used” vibe to them.

No References

Stuff mostly from memory, imagination, or generic exercises.  There are a few I wonder about.  Looking at 191 and 188 I see some reference vibes there.

Scenes

Drawn while in FFXIV looking down the central path in the first capital city in Dawn Trail.  The second is the landscape from “Meteor Golem”. 

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Simple sketch, but trying to get into an improved enough headspace to get fully on track again. Didn't drop the streak, but some of the pieces were really jank to keep the daily streak going to 195. Mail Moogle from FFXIV, outside POTD.

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June 2024

June monthly update on the drawing a day project.  June was mostly lost for reasons.  Drawings were made, but a lot of them were art to keep the trend going for the project and to keep motivation.

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Day 128

Character: Goo from "Dungeon Friends Forever"

Referenced/Copied (non-traced): Volume 2, Page 53

It took me ~128 days, but I think I finally drew something in this drawing something a day challenge to get better at art of mine that I truly like.

Not that I started 128 days ago from zero.

Timelapse. On the second day (going from 126, skip, to 128) I copied the panel onto the canvas to make referencing easier.

With my current goal of studying shading more I tried to shade in flat colors instead of the dot pattern method.

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Monthly Report - May 2024

New month, new format attempt with this. Throwing everything together randomly at month's end didn't sit right with me. Attempting to do it daily didn't either.

May this be a happy medium. I am going to try to split it in "arcs" and introduce a formatting boost.

Holo x Gundam Arc

Only one entry here as this was the tail end of a Hololive x Gundam fanart arc. It was a Biboo themed Gyan. As jank as it looks, I put a stupid amount of effort into it. It became a Xeno's Paradox like situation where I could feel burnout settling in meaning what work I did felt like I was making less ground.

Maybe going forward I could care less about strict month ends and do roughly month chunks depending on where these "arcs" fall to avoid this situation in the future?

Random Arc

There didn't seem to be a theme here.

Herodotus here was an art exercise that I wish I could remember who I heard it from. It was a shading exercise where you don't shade. You try to do do everything in flat high contrast.

I forget what I was doing with the other two.

Shading Arc

101 and 103 aside, this was a relatively long and consistent arc. It started with a slime and giving some translucency a try. Then studying shade on a statue leading into a painterly bug inspired piece. Then onwards.

I really liked how the top row and the island pick worked out.

Refocus Arc

A bit too varied for a hard listing.

106 and 110 were straight up fanart.

107 is straight up missing. I tried a mix of Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, and Photoshop. Maybe it got lost in the shuffle. Maybe I spent two days on 106. That was turning out to be somewhat time consuming and 108 I was burned out on.

111 was me trying to draw along with one of Ninomae Ina'Nis' drawing videos. A Christmas card one?

116 was a half-finished sketch of Bookseller Honda-san.

117 was Ichika from Spilled Ink.

118 was blocking out a public transport drive. Inspired by another drawing of Ina's. Never got around finishing.

As I said, varied, but nearly each one was individually trying something new or had intent going into it.

Here are at day 119, not yet drawn (eyes the 23:36 on the clock), I don't know where it goes from here. After 117 I decided I needed to refocus on avoiding the blend shading as a potential crutch. I might try... I don't even know the word for it. Flatter or sharper color edges?

Shading Arc 2

Started at the tail end of the month. Not sure I have too much of a thought on this one.

Slime just looks... eh. Handless Haunter I feel was a good effort in the shading dept, but a complete disaster elsewhere. Slime neko *cough* fanart, what shading I did felt like a huge improvement.

The Copy X fanart was a multiple day thing. This was just day 1.

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Keeping true to a thought I had on my last update, I decided to practice more with "flatter" shading. Haunter here is a bit jank, besides the missing hands, but I feel like the eyes and mouth show personal progress.

Random quick background to avoid white void syndrome.

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Day 121 and 122

Keeping true to a thought I had on my last update, I decided to practice more with "flatter" shading. Haunter here is a bit jank, besides the missing hands, but I feel like the eyes and mouth show personal progress.

Random quick background to avoid white void syndrome.

Writing notes while drawing might be helping me think things through? Is this normal?

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Day 117

Decided to use Ichika from the Spilled Ink (spilledinkyt) YouTube channel by Daidus and Emirichu for this day's practice.

Used bits from their video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8mOBldcPzs, for reference. Maybe about two hours. Did it while watching episodes 1 and 2 from "For All Mankind" season 3.

Still attempting the blur/painterly coloring, but I think I need to step back from that. Gave up trying to make it work before trying to color in the strawberry portion itself.

Tried to keep the tentacles positioned to avoid having to draw the suckers.

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April 2024 Update

At the end in the "Failed Experiment" heading I'll leave that failed experiment. At the start of April I planned on doing a daily update and posting the result as month's end for my monthly update. On day 86 or so I lost track. Only to realize on day 108.

Looking at April in hindsight, what do I think I can learn or what I learned?

I see where I started trying to branch out into multi-day works instead of sticking to a single day and moving on.

Day 65: Was a failed attempt at it.

Day 71 and 72 was the Nek-sliver.

Day 89 and 90 were Pekora Vegetta.

Looking at the naming convention I use, surprisingly Frieren (I have three 76s and she's 2) wasn't one of them. 89 and 80B, paper bag guy, also weren't.

I suppose towards the end of the month I started stretching myself more with fanart.

The Failed Experiment

Monthly Format, yo!

Yo! Not sure what will be here at month's end, but I decided to try this for April, 2024. I don't want to spam daily with my draw something a day project, but I definitely want to make sure I'm reflecting on this stuff to some degree.

Then I had a thought. Doesn't Tumblr have a draft feature?

*returns a day later to see everyone beyond that is missing despite attempts to save*

Arguably.

I hope, hoped, to use the draft to keep a daily reflection written, formatted, etc. while avoiding a daily spam of drawings that I don't feel merit their own posts. Since my plan is, was, will be, to release a collage monthly... well, this seemed a way to kill two bids at once.

Daily Logs

Day 63 - One of the Lost

One of the lost entries. This will be brief unless I come back to rewrite it when I'm in a better headspace.

Primary Goal: Explore CSP's brushes some.

I feel I accomplished that.

Day 64 - One of the Lost

The primary goal of this one was to play around with a certain style's coloring technique some. Maybe even use it as a template for this purpose going into the future so I could jump straight into the coloring section.

I "ran out of time" partway through practicing inking. Looks like I still have an issue with relative brush sizes.

Since I forgot to mark it, no reference used.

Day 65

*Returns to this on day 76, and coughs up a lung* Vacation and illness arc ahead.

Was going to use this over a few days to practice different shading and coloring techniques, but I ended up dropping it due to travel.

Day 66

Quick sketch due to traveling.

Day 67

Another quick sketch. A borderline abstract sketch of my time in Tennessee.

Day 68

Sad frog in the snow.

Day 69

Random quick sketches.

Day 70

Incomplete sketch of an idea. A Sliver in a circular shape. First attempt was coiling it up.

Day 71

A second attempt. The head is circular with the tail and arm blades making the expression.

Day 72

Probably inspired by Albert from "The Girl From the Other Side". I had finished the series a few days beforehand.

Day 73

My most blatant cheat image.

Day 74

Sickness fulling kicking in.

Day 75

Stupid sick sketch. Random doodle became an "Amogus". Then I did a reflected jump scare in the visor.

Day 76

Starting to feel better. Streak tracking app didn't save my things from yesterday so I thought it was day 75 still when I started. Then I got a "there is already a save by this name!" when I tried to save it as day 75.

After the "proper 76" I continued sketching a bit in the style that feels more "right". The eyes are clearly off. I can feel I'm getting a better sense of hair chunk flows. Granted, at my basic skill "better" is relative.

I'm calling this here. With more time I could do more with it. Maybe another day I will, but it is late and I nearing my limit of trying to put off taking my next dose of cold medicine.

Frieren is the subject.

The next day I ended up doing more work on it.

Day 77

Gave a night landscape a try again.

Day 78

A bunch of random shapes and quick practice. I forget what triggered my desire to go back to working on the basicer basics.

Day 79

Maybe inspired by Albert from "Girl on the Other Side". The horn shape was the primary object of my focus on this day.

Day 80

The goal this day was perspective playing. You can still somewhat see where I kept redrawing the eyes, repositioning them, to get the perspective I wanted.

Day 81

Day 81 proper was just a sketch of The Durge from Baldur's Gate 3.

The warmup was inspired by Pikat's Partner's 30 Day Video.

Day 82

Inspired by a meme, maybe a YouTube short? It was a four frame dealio where each layer was improving your "level". Flat image of water in a glass. Then shading it. Then two more of the red water slurping around the glass.

Day 83

Was in a rush between chores, friends, getting my other X times a week things done. A Haro on adult Gon Freecs' body. The left arm really needs more work. At least the forearm.

Day 84

Got a bug in my ear to try a technique for shirts.

Day 85

Wanted to give cold weather clothes a try.

Day 86

Was a second attempt at a sweater. Turned into randomness.

Day... bleh

At some point I lost track of this. Keeping a daily log just ended up being too much for me right now, I guess.

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Weekly Update – Day 88

NOTE: I missed that this ended up saved as a draft instead of posting. This is day 88's art, but I'm just now noticing this on day 108 >_>'''

It's hella post dated by accident.

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While rewatching the OG “Mobile Suit Gundam” I admired how simple the designs were.  So, I gave Garma a go for that day’s daily practice.  Very sketchy, but it came out well enough that it brushes up against the point that leaves me wondering if I should keep working on it. 

At some point improvement means reaching the point where something new per day won’t work.  I’ll have to start doing stuff over multiple days.

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Day 104B

Been working on using the blend tool the last few days. The buildings were just a quick object to give something to work around.

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Days 99 and 98

Days 98 and 99 of my drawing a bit every day journey of trying to improve. Also proof that the fanart and Gundam arcs are done.

I was happy enough with yesterday's slime. Nothing hugely impressive, felt like I petered out about halfway there, the spear was completely "filler", but I felt it was improvement

For day 99 I started out tracing over a photo of a statue. This helped me get a feel for shading.

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Biboo Gundam

"Sticking out your Gyan for Nerizzler..."

A Biboo, #bijouwled, inspired Gyan.

The "last #hologundam" idea I mentioned in my "Operation British" post.

I hit the burnout wall. I want to come back to this, but probably won't any time soon. #gundamfanart #fanart

Mostly because I'm getting stupider ideas for a whole Hololive Gundam, #hologundam, setting.

Such as "The Principality of Advent" where:

* Zabi Family -> Ravencrofts

* Char -> Shiori

* Ral and Hamon -> Fuwamoco

* ??? (Lala?) -> Biboo

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Operation British

So, an image popped in my head once I learned the first UC Century colony drop was called "Operation British" while rewatching "Mobile Suit Gundam".

This should be the second to last of my current Hololive crossover fanarts. I have only one more idea.

Timelapse. First time I think I broke the 30 second mark on these. The skyline and and theater were effectively traced.

Studying the original, I got some ideas and practice on the shockwaves and the like.

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81b

Weekly minimum social media post for my art a day project/practice.

Durge from BG3 in a generic Act 1 outfit.