Foliage beast WIP-2: Success!

A-ha! After a few days of trial, error, hunting, and shrubbery, I finally managed to find part of a tutorial that actually helped with making leaves.

So here's the latest WIP sporting revamped foliage:

Still not quite done with the leaves, but I think it's a definite improvement over what I had.

Hopefully now I'll stop dreaming of leaves and partially waking up thinking how to do them >_>;;

Foliage beast WIP-1

Just got an Intuos4 yesterday and went with one of the previous sketches to use as practice. I definitely feel more loose and relaxed now that I don't have a cramped work area, and can work at a faster pace. It hasn't helped me with my shrubbery, though >.>

And I do know I need to up the contrast in a number of spots. When I was working on it it looked fine, but now I can definitely see how flat it is.

Er...

Well, things didn't turn out quite how I had planned, but I finally have sketches to post albeit a couple weeks later than intended.

Nothing too exciting here -- just some crappy random doodles.

More work doodles, but this time not quite so crappy. I may even fix these up and make proper drawings out of 'em.

 
I don't normally sketch or doodle in pen, but I had left my pencil at home so it was either use a pen or be bored for 20 minutes. I chose the former as I had also left my MP3 player at home >_>;;

But I'm starting to like the permanence of it. It sucks to screw up or change my mind about something, but because of that I need to think harder about just where to put lines. The only bad thing is that my last Micron is running low on ink so I'm going to have to do a pen run sooner rather than later now.

Side note to self: buy a dang notepad with plain paper in it!

A Start?

This may or may not end up being a simple impulse to make a sketch blog. I rather doubt many would/will bother to read it because frankly, I'm not that good. I'm not an up and coming artist, I don't have mad skillz or the charisma to draw people in -- I'm just an amateur artist still deciding whether art should be a hobby or something more.

But! I still want to get better, and hence the blog. I have the nasty habit of procrastination and getting distracted by a small thing known as the internet. I just can't seem to shake either of them, but this is where this blog comes in. I figure that maybe, just maybe, if I have a place to post crappy sketches, practice drawings, and WIPs then I might be more inclined to focus on art instead of browsing the internet aimlessly.

Only time will tell if this will work, but here's to hoping.

Cheers!
- Zephire