I learned a lesson on this one: Don't spend a week drawing fox studies for foxes that you're going to eliminate. Composition (story) comes first!

Thanks for doing these prompts and contests, guys! They really are testing my ideas and skills, and slowly, I'm building a process that has some consistency, even though the "medium" varies.

And I really hand it to all my fellow artists who came up with such creative takes on this prompt!

I just changed out my entry for a version with my name on it. I hope that's ok. It's exactly the same artwork but I keep forgetting to include my name!

Some types like to be alone. Others, not so much...

Autumn reflection

The sole purpose of this piece was to see if I could finish something in a day, and to have fun. Yesterday I did have fun, and I thought I had finished it. But then it became evident that the legs were flipping (that is, you couldn't tell which one was in front and which in back). So today I spent most of the day redrawing it over and over until it worked, which was less fun. But I finished!

I'm very tempted to add a popsicle to that hand sticking out, but not today. Happy June!

Just trying to produce more finished work so I can evaluate it and have it evaluated online. This is a waiter I saw in a (coffee) bar in a tiny mountain hamlet near Aosta, Italy. He looked fierce and eccentric and I thought he might make a good character. I am always torn, though, between whether to exaggerate for comic effect or whether to keep things relatively realistic.

I didn't have much time to be on the forums while I was taking the Backgrounds course, but now I'll try to start posting and commenting again ️.

Because it rains every day in November where I live, and even a little patch of color brings hope.

Thanks for inventing Slowvember, Lee!

I spent the last week doing a brick and mortar workshop at which we assembled a lot of traditional elements into a digital collage. Our assigned story was The Musicians of Bremen, and we had to choose an environment, so I choose the rural US in the early 20th century, probably because I had to choose quickly and it was so far away from where I really was.

I spent most of the week developing sketches of the characters, and I did a super quick storyboard, during which I was amused to realize that the donkey thought he was going to play the lute and told the dog to play the kettle drums, but it will never work because the donkey only has hooves! In my story, the donkey became a she, and the instruments changed as well, but during the process I got an image in my mind of when things are settled, they finally get to play, and the donkey is found out.

This JPEG loaded really green for some reason. It doesn't look that green on either my Cintiq nor on my computer monitor, so I don't know what to do about it! But the original has much more muted, almost taupe-ish greens throughout, including the donkey's skin and the drum.

I'm supposed to go see relatives the end of the week, but I really wanted to get this piece to a decent point first. I'm tired of not finishing things! I'll probably get to my relatives' house and realize I didn't pack any shoes or something...

This morning I cleaned up all my January contest "tracks in the snow" files before putting everything on an external hard drive. Honestly, I was shocked at how many changes my contest piece went through, and how late some of them happened. And yet, I think some of those last minute changes really helped.

So I thought I would write down some notes and share them with you guys. What you get out of them--or not-- will obviously depend on your needs at the moment. I'm especially working on trying to get stylistically consistent and solidify my process so I can increase productivity and up the quality of concepts and technique as well. And I would be interested in hearing how your processes work as well, because that's not something we talk about that often.

First, a huge thank you!!! Because you guys really gave great critiques, I used pretty much all of your ideas, and they made the final drawing so much better! I just hope I can eventually internalize them.

Secondly, for whatever reason, I had nine different iterations, as in photoshop files, of this piece from the time I chose my thumbnail to posting on the contest thread. I find this is about average. It would be nice if I could get the number down, but generally either I get confused by all the options or the file just gets too unwieldy and I lack the confidence to eliminate previous versions. Hmm...

A couple of things stayed pretty much the same from start to finish, and I kept them because they were fresh looking. One of them was the drawing of the dog. A lot of the drawing on the trees stayed the same as well, though I changed their positions.

In summary, what I learned so far:

-The boards really help!!!
-Always, always get the compositional problems worked out first!!!
-Flipping the piece horizontally helps. I have a tendency to develop a directional slant, and while I never eliminated it completely, flipping did help.
-I'm going to try something else in this style
-Reference really does help, as does working out drawing problems just after the thumbnail stage
-Making animal people is fun! I still prefer drawing realistic-ish children, but I'm also starting to loosen up a bit by trying all these different things.
-Perspective study really helps just after the thumbnail stage
-You really can produce something personally satisfying from a prompt that doesn't inspire you at first glance

If you want to see the contest threads, I think you can find two or three of them under my profile.

What have you been learning in the contests and in your recent WIPs? I'd be interested to hear!

This drawing is, ironically considering it's Slowvember, an attempt to produce something quickly. It only took a few days' work off and on, which for me is unusually fast. It's based on a friend's son who likes to come home from preschool and dress up as Rapunzel. He's definitely a boy, but who doesn't like the idea of going around with swishy blonde hair now and then?

An illustrator friend posted this article and I thought it was interesting, so I'll share it here to see what you guys think:

https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-look-so-similar-these-days/

It talks about low pay, but we knew that already, didn't we?

What is more interesting to me is how economics and above all, technology, affect style. Here's a quote by artist Alex Eben Meyer:

“I think it is less about an artist working in a particular genre and more about having a strong point of view, ideas, style, and craft,” he explains. “For me personally, color (regardless of depth) and humor are some of my most important attributes.”

In short, he doesn't care about the style issue. To me, this is almost a throwback to a medieval sensibility in which the technique was a given and the variety came within a limited set of choices. The fun part about medieval illustrations is the particulars of what the figures are doing. And I do like the illustration of his that the article shows.

But I also think it's very different from a children's book sensibility, and very different from my own. I think I spend too much time wading through style issues. Of course, I'm a beginner and he's not.

Also, brings to mind how often Will, Jake and Lee remind us to come up with a good concept. That's especially important in editorial illustration.

Somewhere there should be a good mix of all the above that is also doable economically! What do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

@Frost-Drive You've gotten some great advice here. Before I read the other comments, I too was thinking, "Well, it depends what stage you're in." The initial creativity that goes into concepting and thumb nailing a piece requires a lot of extra energy.

Also, I find that if I don't take breaks about every two hours, I literally start to lose sight of the big picture and I end up wasting a lot of time. But 90 minutes sounds about right.

And I have never been much for mindless activities. I spend my free time on friendships, listening to teachers/speakers while doing housework, and taking walks to empty my head and release the tension that comes from being slumped over the tablet for too long. Those things are a good counter to working alone all day inside my own head. Each person will find their own balance.

Then again, my goal isn't to be a human assembly line, because I don't think that's what makes a good artist. My goal is to make good art (and hopefully get paid for it eventually), and that does require getting more work done.

That said, I wasn't working fast enough, so last week I did exactly what you suggested about getting my life out of balance: I participated in Childhood Week, and I only had roughs going in, so I ended up working from early morning until about 9:30 every evening to finish each piece. Nothing else in my life got done except for the bare minimum required to put meals on the table (for my husband, because I would have just put tuna on a salad and called it good). At the end of the day, I collapsed, got up early the next morning, and started again. And every day from about 11:00-3:00, I had that kind of near panic that children feel when they start to run down a hill and get out of control and don't know if this sensation will end in exhilaration or a trip to the ER .

Although I didn't know how much work it was going to take to bring a piece from roughs to finished each day, I did know that I was setting a tough deadline for myself, and I did it precisely to force myself into production and greater efficiency. I work much too slowly and am too much of a perfectionist in ways that don't make for better finished pieces. Doing a drawing challenge forced me to finish work extremely quickly and post it whether I liked it or not. And in the end, I posted 6 out of 7 days (for one, I just couldn't get the rough to read well and will have to go back to it). Out of the 6, I really like 2, 2 others have potential but maybe need a little more work, and 2 I dislike but posted anyway because that was the challenge.

Could I go on like this? No, because my household is a disaster even after just one week and there are things I simply can't put off anymore. And my personal life needs some attention as well. Not to mention that I moved all my English students' lessons to early this week. But I highly recommend doing a challenge now and then! As a limited experience I think it was very valuable, because it "velocitized" me. Now I hope I can go back and finish a piece in a few days to a week instead of half a month. I streamlined my process. I looked at my pieces compared to those I most liked in the challenge and noted the differences. I made a list of aspects of illustration that I want to go back and study to improve my work. None of this would have been possible in the same way if I hadn't forced myself to finish work very quickly and get it out there.

In the end, I think the secret to drawing all day is motivation combined with a workable routine. Motivation may be love of the work, need to earn money, or setting yourself a challenge in which you are accountable to others. For the routine, I recommend thinking about what will bring you both enough hours, but also focus on what makes your work better. Only you will know the right combination for you, but listening to others' experience helps.

Nice character design! Maybe give the leaves a highlight here and there? If done sparsely and loosely, it could give a little dimension without being distracting. But that's just my quick opinion.

Thank you all so much! I will rework this at the beginning of next week and post the results!

@Cory-Leick Gee, I hadn't thought about the Apple "conspiracy" aspect! Hmmm...I have loved Apple products for years, but lately they are slowly eroding my enthusiasm with these updates that break everything else.

And yes, I read the comments too! Very helpful!

@Chip-Valecek This was today's Childhood Week prompt--Mission. I'm going to skip it and come back to it, because I am killing myself trying to do a finished illustration from a rough sketch every day, and in this case, the rough sketch simply isn't working yet.

Anyway, the scene is based on a game my sister and I made up in which we pretended there was a flash flood and we had to rescue all the dolls and animals from the rising waters as quickly as possible. Because it's not easy to show pretend water , I added some props. Now it looks more like the ocean--oh well! In the drawing, I am over-dramatically trying to "swim" and hand off a stuffed horse to my younger sister, and my best friend is turning around to see what all the fuss is about as she tends to her rescuees.

@Miriam Good point! I'll muss up the beds at least a little! Also I did notice that the angles were similar, but I might take out my mom/grandmother (could be either). The huge shark toy was an attempt to follow Will's big, little huge rule, but it's hard to follow the logic of stuffed animal games and composition rules at the same time! My sister really did have a stuffed frog that was as big as she was, though, and it really did hang from the bed.

@Frost-Drive You may be right about the corners. It will make any scene look flatter. I was just trying to distribute lots of animals!

Anyone have suggestions as to how to make it realistically chaotic (because it is an adrenalin game, after all), and still preserve enough order to be a pleasing illustration? Generally we don't think of kids' rooms as oases of harmony, especially in situations like this! Maybe I'll have time by next week to review Draw 50 Things and find some examples.

Thank you all for your feedback!

Thank you!

@peteolczyk I didn't exactly do thumbnails, because this exercise for me is all about drawing more quickly--ideally 1 or 2 days instead of two weeks. But I did move things around and change poses. I think I may skip this day and come back to it when I have time to start again from scratch!

@Rachel-Horne You're right about the beds! I noticed that too. I was trying to limit the dark values to the central characters so as to draw attention to them.

Back to the drawing board, so to speak!

@peteolczyk Thank you! Your diagram confirms that it's a mess! I was thinking more of the logic of the game and a kid's messy room, but I think I need to impose at least a little more order--like in one of those Baroque battle scenes!

Also, I keep thinking, How can I apply the rule of...what does Will say? Big, little, huge? Sure, there is some variation in the size of stuffed animals, but not that much!

Hi! This is a rough value sketch for one of a series of illustrations from prompts. I don't want to reveal the prompt because I want to see how someone might read it coming from outside. This is the one in the series I'm having the most trouble with, partly because it has turned into a Draw 25 Things exercise, whereas my goal was to work very quickly!

So, can you tell what's going on here? Suggestions for improvement? Suggestions or grouping things so that it looks more organized? (I know, for example, that the girl on the floor and the shark are at the same angle, so I may change one of them.)

Thanks in advance for your fresh reads and advice!

@peteolczyk Wow! Ii'm so happy for you!! I know what you mean about the small steps. They give you confidence to go to the next one. You can do it!!

@micmac I followed your search terms, found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StejKvrCGT0

I followed all the steps, including downloading and activating another app to open up the input menu option, and it helped a ton! It's not 100% glitch free, but the lasso tool is usable again! Woohoo! Thank you!