Week five of the THE DIGITAL DREAM, a little 75 day challenge of Studying and Documenting the process of Learning Digital Painting, WRONG! I realised something this week … I made a mistake when I started this challenge. I made the focus on the wrong part of the challenge. It hit me this week; I’m trying to learn two separate things at once, which is silly and causing conflict.

Week One : GETTING TO GRIPS WITH EVERYTHING

Week Two : REALISING HOW SIMILAR TO TRADITIONAL DRAWING WORKING DIGITALLY IS

Week Three : KEY CONCEPTS BEHIND WORKING DIGITALLY

Week Four : EYE STRAIN

This Week : REFOCUSING

More on that in a moment, but first, here’s a round up of the week five daily posts :

DAYS 25 TO 30

STUDY EXERCISES

STUDY EXERCISES

DAY 25 • PAINT BRUSH GIRLS
Was down the launderette this morning sketching, and found myself bringing these Paint Brush Girls back to life. I first drew them in 2013, but they’ve been asleep ever since.

There’s two types of Paint Brush Girls: mature girl and baby girl :)

I imagine the mature girls as physical paint brushes, with their long legs being handles you hold, so you paint with their hair. The baby girls don’t have fully formed wooden legs yet, instead they have little wobbly brush bristles.

DAY 26 • CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
Pencils today, trying to work out how to sketch chibi characters. Wish I could draw what I see in my head :(

Going to break them down into separate bits; spending a block of time studying chibi eyes, another chibi mouths, another chibi hands etc.

Than I’ll mix and match and sketch her over and over and over again, till lilSOPHIE looks like I want her too lol

DAY 27 • FEMALE MANGA EYES
Pencil sketching day again with manga eyes, copied from other Artists.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and create some of my own eyes; I expect to be drawing lots of long lashes

DAY 28 • CHIBI MANGA EYES
More eye pencil sketches today :) This was fun; messing about with heart shapes and lashes, but I’m still slightly confused trying to draw things from my imagination.

Brainwave!!! Just remembered an email I got from Proko ages ago about drawing from imagination.

Found it • proko.com/drawing-from-imagination-tips-on-improving-visual-memory/

It has a video and practice exercises!!! Going to watch it in bed tonight :)

DAY 29 • GESTURE DRAWING
Some gesture drawings today with QuickPoses.com, which makes Gesture Drawing so much fun :)

You can earn certificates for certain milestones, like: 10 hours, 30 hours, 1000 hours etc. I print mine out, laminate them and stick em on the wall :)

Checked my stats today; I’ve drawn 17036 timed poses … insane!

DAY 30 • CHIBI SKETCHES
Beans! That’s the shape of a chibi :) Finally starting to understand … was a fun today.

I watched a YouTube tutorial video by Yamuo where she showed the chibi as basic shapes; there were beans everywhere :)

This is the Chibi Tutorial Video • Yamuo – Chibi Tutorial!

TWO CONFLICTING GOALS?

I planned this challenge about three weeks before I started it. I wrote on a whiteboard everything I wanted to achieve beforehand. I broke it all down, so that it would pose a challenge, but be doable.

I have two main goals for this challenge

1. Bring lilSOPHiE to life
2. Find out, Do I enjoy the process of Digital Painting?

The MAIN GOAL was always to reach day 75 having brought lilSOPHiE (a Chibi Character) to life. I set out to use the 75 days to find out what she looks like, how to draw her, than reach a point where I could sketch her without thinking about it … even if it was just one basic pose.

The issue is, this CONFLICTS with the SUB GOAL of finding out if I enjoy the Process of Digital Painting.

Why? Because

1. I don’t know how to draw a Chibi Character, and
2. I don’t know how to Paint Digitally

I’m trying to learn two things at once … this is silly! You can’t learn multiple things at once, well, you can, but I like to break things down so that learning is as easy as possible. I like to focus on only learning one thing at a time. So I now find myself asking the question.

WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT?

Learning Digital Painting, or How To Draw Chibi Characters?

How to draw a Chibi wins, as that is the main goal of this challenge. The issue is, I somehow made learning digital painting the main goal, I lost sight of the real reason for doing this … to bring lilSOPHiE to life …

I’m really determined to have a lilSOPHiE character created by the end of the year – Digital Painting can wait lol

So that means, for the next week or so, this really isn’t going to be a digital challenge … it’s going to be a HOW TO DRAW A CHIBI CHARACTER CHALLENGE.

WEEK SIX

Week Six was the most fun yet! Find out why, via the WEEK SIX BLOG POST