Sketching for October '12

I was going to do a mixed post for October and November's sketching, but then I forgot to scan November, so November will be a few days coming. I also had a post planned for the piece I've been working on over the last month, but the publishing got pushed back to January, so I'll write one then. I've finished that piece, and working on it, as well as some head expanding problems at work have left me little artistic mojo left over for much else. The piece is finished now though, so I can resume speedpainting guilt free. We'll see how many I can do between now and Christmas so I can cram another post into December to make up for the lost one.

Anyway, sketching. Didn't do much in October or November (as I've mentioned frequently), but there's enough for a quick post I think (albeit one with a mere three images). On we go then...

Free Sketching
So these were from October, as you may have gathered, that explains the presence of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster here. I quite like the Monster - he ended up cute rather than menacing, and I am A-OK with that (though I guess I need to practice menacing lighting and expressions now). Vinnie Van Gough to The Monster's left was just some practice with facial hair and not intended as a portrait of the famous 1.5 eared impressionist (I hear his Napoleon was uncanny). Yes, another girl with Elf/Vulcan ears on the left there. I like pointy ears, they're cute. There's apparently a big fuss as as you can have your ears pointed surgically these days, and "All the kids are doing it, under the influence of Spock and Arwen!" etc. Good for them, it's certainly more attractive than those giant earning implants that stretch your ear lobes out like silly string - and unfortunately that's a lot more prevalent. if you have those ear implants don't be too offended, that's dandy, I'm happy for your choice, but I don't have to find it aesthetically pleasing either. I should probably do a proper pointy eared painting soon and get it out of my system.

Figure Drawing Practice
Not much of any real note here. I clearly still need to work on hands a lot, and all that stuff I learned about arms recently has apparently already escaped me. I'll be working on more anatomical studies from reference over the next month or so, so hopefully things will improve a little. I am fairly please with the back on the guy to the right, and the girl to his left (except her witch hand and his stumpy legs), but there's clearly a long way to go here.

Failures
OK, so only 2 of these are out and out disasters, the others have some merits but are still failures over all. The upper half of the girl on the left is pretty good, and I quite like her head and hair, but the lower half. oops. The Bat-mobile looks OK in a retro kinda 60's way, but my son told me it was terrible. When a 5 year old thinks your Bat-mobile is terrible you may as well believe them, they know their Bat-mobiles.

And that's it for today, short but sweet (I have a headache coming on or I'd waffle more). More to follow, probably next weekend.  In the meantime, here's a pointless picture of the Lego space fighter I built for my son, a sort of mini "Daddy can you?"