Hey, Guess what I've been drawing

I'll give you a hint

 It's a certain kid's cartoon that's becoming an internet sensation. If you don't know what it is yet, it's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Believe it or not, I actually do genuinely like it. It's not even a "liking it Ironically" kind of like, It's a good show. It was made by Lauren Faust, who either worked on most of the shows I grew up on (Powerpuff girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends) or is married to the person who made them. (Craig Mccracken) I think two things that really make the show stand out are the characters (who are more than just sterotypes and are very likable) and the animation (which is absolutely superb.) As can be assumed, I'm really into drawing them.

Actually, drawing these characters has helped me draw a lot. First of all, my eyes no longer look both terrifying and ugly. The other major aspect it's helped me on is efficiency. I can currently draw on of these fellas in fifteen minutes if I don't take into account editing (The pictures I'm showing you are kind of old, so the same can't be applied to them, I was still getting into the groove) Also I'm finally taking advantage of all the benefits that plotting the picture out (circles, basic shapes, other guidelines) can give me. I've gotten a lot of practice with my digital art too. Before these pictures, I neglected my tablet and photoshop for a little, so practice was definitely needed I kind It's really helped out and I've even been able to apply it to other aspects of my art.

All in all, I say check the show out. You may be pleasantly surprised.
In other news, I'm back... If you didn't notice already. I'm going for a different approach this time, something that'll make me want to keep updating, as opposed to it just being a chore. I have a lot of pictures already done and show-able, so I shouldn't have an excuse for not doing an update.
(P.S Twilight Sparkle is best pony)

out with the old

In with the new

I have been extremely dissatisfied with that old style for a while now, I was worried it would cause another art block like last time I did a mass transition of styles, but I'm actually rather pleased with the results and it didn't even hurt as much as last time.

Now I'm not going to talk about each picture 'n all that like usual, I'm just taking this as a chance to catch everyone up so they don't get left behind. I'll say that this style is definitely getting much more realistic than my previous style, which makes me very pleased, near this style is pretty much what I've been working towards

I've still got a ways to go, but it's always nice to progress to an even better state of art. The important thing to do is to draw and draw some more.

Now I have to focus on a few more things such as redoing how I draw bodies, and backgrounds. But soon, in the very near future (hopefully) I might be able to start drawing up some comic books, and that will be awesome right?

That's really all of the interesting art related things going on right now. If I think of anything I missed, I'll adress it in my next blog. I promise that I'll make much more of an effort to update this blog, because I've gotten complaints from the people who read this in real life before.

Until next time,
Pikachao

Winter

Granted, this isn't my latest piece of work, but I thought I'd post it anyway. this is probably going to be the last of certain aspects of my current style, especially the eyes and the bodies. I'm planning on doing a complete redux of my style to make it...well, better.
In other news, my tablet is finally working, so you can expect more pictures in the digital fashion as well
until next time,
Pikachao

chibi background

look at it. I'm not done, I want more characters.
I don't like my chibi, but it works enough
more posts later...maybe

it's back

OK, first of all the big new. I can draw bodies now. Also, since this one is mainly catching up, I'm not talking about the art, I'mma just post it in chronological order (also known as posting it from worst to best)

Huzzah, now hopefully You'll start seeing more blog posts. Let this be  a place holder for the last...while

Cheers

Man my necks look weird

This is going to be a relatively text free. For a simple reason, I have a lot of pictures to show. Yes they are all heads; yes I am working on drawing bodies eventually, but not now.  Let it be known that this is going to have a lot of pictures spanning a large amount of time. It all started a little after my last blog post, when I drew:

This.

This is Joy, Madame Mystery’s OC and her representative from now on. She’s an arctic fox. 

Afterwards I decided that I wanted to draw a male character, which lead to:

This.

It’s a Dhole (look it up) and a guy…moving on to the next part of it…which is:

The Slump

This was a dark time for my art, I was not doing well for a little bit there and it honestly drove me crazy. None of my stuff was satisfactory to me and I was bothered by my art. Luckily it didn’t last as long as my last one as I got out of the slump after drawing:

This.

Back out. Granted it’s not perfect, the snout feels a little long, but it did it’s job of getting me out of the slump. Once again, it has no name.

After getting out of the slump, I said to myself “I want to draw a cat thing” So I did, and I got:

This:

It’s a tiger/coyote. Frankly the snout is still too long but I like how it turned out.

After drawing this tiger (Lily) for a few more times I finally ended with:

This:

Oh look, its emotion. What do you know? Not much to say. It’s a smug girl. That’s all there is to it.

           

Well hey, its a blog post, you should be happy. Fun times. Also next blog will have something amazing, so of course I’m not going to update for two more months (Just kidding…hopefully.) Have fun guys. Don’t talk to strangers. Always look both ways before crossing the road, and don’t drink and drive.

Live Long and Prosper,

Pikachao

Here And Back Again

Hey, I finally finished star ocean two (expect characters from that game to show up now and again) So that means I have all the time in the world to spend drawing/blogging…it’s not like there’s much else to do…summer is deceivingly uneventful...as far as time wasting goes. Drawing wise I’ve made large leaps in skill since summer started. Sure I can’t draw bodies yet…but I am getting better at drawing shapes/drawing rough shape centric drawings, and it is awesomely awesome. Sure, a year/month/week I won’t like the drawings I’ve made very much, but they are stepping stones to higher point in drawing. Every bad picture I make helps me improve in some way (except for my fiasco with four legged animals, that baby was a dead end.)


…

I’m monologing right now, aren’t I…yeah…umm…I’ll just get started on my non intro part of my blog right now…





Anyway…in the actually blog post…I should probably talk about what I’ve been doing (art-wise) since I last wrote to y’all. You see it all started when I was in the Wahacan jungles of Guadalupe. After I periled…umm…oh yeah…this is the wrong story, that tale shall be saved for another time.

I admit, part of the absence as of late has been laziness, pure and simple… and lately I have been doing some (“) diligent (“) drawing practice. I found some really good tutorials for drawing Furries. I must say that I found quite a bit of use out of them. While I didn’t copy them completely or anything, I did gain new abilities I didn’t have yet.

The other half has to do with the sketchbook I got from Madame Mystery. You see the issue has to do with my scanner and it. If I want to scan a page from the sketchbook, I have to take that piece out of the sketchbook which, in my experience, usually means I’m not drawing anything new on that paper again. Not wanting to waste paper, I try to prolong my scanning experiences. Right now is just one of those times when I’ve filled a page. Granted my drawing is smaller than usual, but when I get more comfy in my own britches, I’ll probably take up more space when drawing solo pictures.

Now that I’ve got the explanation out of the way, I can start talking about just what I’ve been drawing lately. I must say that it has changed radically over the last while. It’s become a lot less cartoonish. I can’t draw any more than heads still, but I am becoming comfortable in drawing skeletons for my characters. It’s really great for me, as I am not very partial to the cartoony look of some pictures (including the ones my pictures had.)

These last weeks have marked quite a few firsts for me, but I’ll mention those as I come to them. First I want to talk about snouts. Drawing snouts are a love-hate relationship. I can’t draw snouts easily, but I really, really want to be able to. Luckily, the tutorials I found were pretty helpful on that, but looking at someone show you how to draw them only gets you so far (I’ve talked about it a lot. If you really want to know which it is, I can post a link). I had a lot of failures before I even got the first success.

My first snout related success.

 

More Snout success

I tell you what. That success was so great just because I actually…well, succeeded. That was followed by more failures, of course, but I got some to work every now and then. (Word of advice: if you’re going into art, be prepared for many, many, many failures. If you aren’t familiar to the term failure yet, you will be soon.)

But, alas, it was not enough. Not for me anyway. I had to do different face positions. I probably failed on that more than I’ve ever failed on a specific thing before (at least not on ones that lead to success anyway.) It was long and painstaking, but I finally did it. Here it is, in all it’s hard worked glory.

I admit that this contributed a lot to the lateness. I was hesitant to call this picture “done” and rip it out of the book (see paragraph 5)

This makes me proud for many, many reasons:

1. This took me quite a while. Usually I can finish a picture in thirty minutes, max. That made me unsure though, because everyone else said it took them hours to do pictures of theirs. Believe it or not, the length it took me to finish this is one of the contributing factors in my happiness, as weird as that sounds.

2. It actually looks really good. It’s based off of shapes, yet doesn’t show said shapes too noticeably. If you look at my past pictures (even just those two other pictures in this very blog post,) the shapes are pretty… there, but this seems to hide it better than all my earlier drawings.

3. It looks more complete than my usual drawings. I always hated how my drawings were all sketches, and my sketches were always finished drawings. It makes me happy to think that this is not a sketch, and I’m proud to say it.

The only thing I feel I need to focus on right now is hair, so expect that to be my focus in future blogs. I’m sorry this isn’t that long for a five week hiatus, but it was a fulfilling hiatus for me as an artist, so I hope you understand. Not much else to say really, just…see you next blog post, whenever that may be.



Cheers,

Pikachao