Get ready... get set... DRAW!

 I came across Outcast Studios and the Daily Sketch Challenge this week in deviantArt, and figured I would give it a go. The idea is that the moderator selects a character, posts some reference, and then the members of the group draw that character and post their art within 36 hours. The intention is to spend 15-30 minutes on the drawing. I tended to go over the time limit, but based on some of the other drawings on the board, I might not be the only one. Or maybe the other people are all just crazy-fast and awesome.  

Monday's challenge was Firestar. 

I went way over on this by the time I was done inking it, although the initial pencil work probably fell more or less within the 30 minutes. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially the fire effects. And she's more or less in proportion. I didn't use any reference for this, other than to double-check the costume once I'd roughed out the pose.

Tuesday's challenge was The Monarch. He's a villain from The Venture Brothers, which I've heard of but have never seen. I guess this is more or less what the character looks like, though. Again, I went longer than the 1/2 hour by the time I'd inked it up, but the rough drawing was done in about 15-20 minutes.

Wednesday was Hwoarang, a character from Tekken. Again, this was not a character that I was familiar with before he came up as the challenge topic. I'll likely revisit this one when I have more time. There are a lot of neat details on his costume to play around with, so I'd like to do up a nice, clean  drawing and fully render it up with colours and all. 

I used a photo reference from a Tae Kwon Do competition to get the pose for this, but only drew a quick rough stick figure from the photo to get the pose and angle down, then I made up the actual figure, then I checked the character reference to get the costume right. So I'd say this is about 80% from my imagination, and 20% checking reference material.

Thursday's challenge was "The Coon",
in which Cartman plays South Park's answer to Rorschach and other assorted costumed heroes.  I at least knew South Park, and Cartman, although I hadn't seen this episode until I googled it so I would know what was going on. Other than spending the extra half-hour on 'reference' this one totally fell within the time... mostly because I didn't try to ink it.

Friday's challenge was Dexter's Lab. But I was busy on Friday so I didn't get to it until Saturday morning. This one was finished within the half hour, which was a good thing, because I barely made the deadline as it was. If I had taken any longer on the drawing I wouldn't have made it in. 


This character, I know. I watched the cartoon when it was on, and have been kind of a fan of Genndy Tartakovsky in general, so this one was relatively easy for me.


I knew right away that I wanted to do a robot-suit version of him, mostly to challenge myself because I'm kind of bad at drawing tech, but also just because robots are cool.


The pose here is a little bit inspired by a Lego mecha although they look nothing alike. The robot is from one of the bits that the show used to bump to commercial.


I'd encourage any other artist to get in on this group, either in deviantArt or on the Outcast Studios forum. The daily sketch challenge group is nice and supportive, so it's a very safe place to get used to showing your stuff. Having something like this has been great in getting me to pick up the pencil and try something new, every day. And that's really the important part, if you want to be any good at drawing.


Pick up your pencil.


Draw.


Every day.