I wrote this blog post the other week about trying something new and challenging myself a bit, and I'm glad to say that for a change, I've actually managed to keep it up! I've been keeping to a routine of spending a couple of hours every Sunday doing them so I have two more to share on here today. I probably won't share them every week on here, maybe just every other week as I have other things I'd like to post about on here too, but they will all be on my social media accounts (links to which you can find at the bottom of my website).

First up is this dinosaur head, everyone that knows me knows that I absolutely love dinosaurs! I really enjoy doing studies of them, which is kind of essential when you're an artist because once you get used to drawing the fundamentals of that specific animal, plant, vehicle etc. it becomes much easier to draw from memory or create your own.

I wanted him to look pretty lethal so I made sure he had some nasty looking teeth and plenty of weaponry on his jaw and head in general. I'm still learning and definitely wish I'd not used any colour on his skin and maybe just stuck to shading and lighting it instead, letting the natural colour of the card work as his skin tone, but I think this one turned out pretty decent overall!

This next one is a different story though! I also really like drawing birds, I don't know if that's because they're very similar to dinosaurs or whether they just appeal to me visually but I just think that their shapes and features are really fun to draw. So I decided to draw a bird, I kind of wanted to keep it slightly prehistoric looking, but I also knew in my head that I wanted to use some really bright colours to make it a bit more exciting.

I think the colour choice in general works, but they are a little TOO bright and because I'm quite limited supply wise at the moment (Copic markers aren't cheap and I didn't want to invest too much money incase I didn't get into using them!) so I didn't really have a way to tone the colours back. It was Sunday evening when I did this, it was dark out and I was so involved in what I was doing (other creatives will know where I'm coming from!) that I didn't turn my light on as it got darker, it wasn't exactly pitch black but it was definitely getting much harder to see. But I carried on and ended up accidentally using a way darker marker for the shading than I wanted to, especially around the neck and the belly area.

When I did turn my light on and realised, I was gutted and kind of just gave up! I made sure I finished it off, and I wasn't giving up in the sense of defeat, I just knew that I'd spent enough time on it and any more time spent was only going to make it worse. I knew that I'd achieved the goal of completing another card sketch, I could see where I'd gone wrong and now I'm able to take that on to the next drawing. I'm really trying to stay in the mindset of 'finished not perfect' lately which I think is really helping me through this little challenge.

Also, it's nearly October, which means it's nearly Inktober! Absolutely crazy to think that it's that time again. I'm going to aim to complete every day this year, I am on holiday for half of it but I'm going to make sure I prepare and hopefully it'll be all good! I won't be posting the drawings on here daily, and will probably just do one or two blog posts showing them instead. If you do want to keep up with them daily though, feel free to follow me on one of my social media channels (links at the bottom of this page).

Thanks guys!

2 X NEW CARD SKETCHES