Every Day Has Its Dog

As the title of this post should indicate, the main focus is... a dirt-bike!  Okay, not really.  There is a dirt-bike thrown in there, but mainly because my other canines are already posted here and here.

This first drawing draws direct inspiration from those oh so beloved dogs playing poker.  My variation being that the dogs are shooting pool. Since, prior to this blog, the majority of my audience was comprised of my students I removed the usual cigars and replaced the alcoholic beer with Barq's Root Beer (Get it? Barq's. Because dogs bark.) Yeah, if you aren't used to the bad puns by now, you haven't been reading my blog long enough. It isn't my favorite drawing, but a lot of people seem to like it so here it is.

Detail of the bottles

Now that the dogs playing pool are out of the way, here's another drawing of a canine that is one of my favorites.  A student suggested after seeing some of my drawings that I should try drawing a grey wolf. Thank you Nicholas M. for making that suggestion! I'm sure if I really stared at it for a long time that I'd notice things that bother me, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm especially proud of the texture detail of his nose and the detail I put in the teeth. Again, the eyes are larger than they would be in nature. Like the aforementioned puns, that's just part of who I am.

And now, without further ado, is the dirt-bike.  This is the final major component of the composite drawing I mentioned in last Sunday's post. My distaste for drawing machines was overridden by the fact that I'd asked for suggestions. I didn't go super-detailed (or even slightly detailed) on the inner workings of the engine, but I think the basic idea of Dirt-bike was accomplished reasonably well. If I must find something nice to say about it, I am mostly pleased with the way the wheels turned out (hehehe "wheels turned"). I think I even managed to pull off the foreshortening pretty convincingly.

And so concludes this chapter in the ongoing saga that is the Hey Mister H! Blog.  Tune into for the next exciting episode of Wired Wednesday...well...Wednesday.  You may have paid for your whole seat, but you'll only be using the edge! As I mentioned in Wednesdays post, remember to help support and encourage your local artists.  Artists don't always get paid well (in fact we very rarely get paid well), but a few words of encouragement can go a long way to supplement that.

Stay creative,

AH!

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, or Some Combination Thereof?

I think that title describes these pictures well.
This first drawing was a way to stretch my wings a bit (if you'll forgive the pun) by drawing a close-up of a hawk's head.  Of course, drawing a bird meant drawing feathers, which is not only a pretty relaxing activity but also excellent practice in drawing repeated, similar shapes. The difficult part is keeping the feathers similar in shape, while still including their natural variations so they don't look artificial.  There's very little shading in the feathers, which is another step outside of my comfort area.  The great part is that the angles of the feathers show the contour of the bird, rendering shading (again forgive the pun) virtually unnecessary.

The tree that is below is the result of the visual artist's equivalent of writer's block.  I can't really complain though, since I ended up with a really detailed illustration of a ficus tree.  The leaves look better in person, but you can see I employed a similar method to that of the hawk's feathers.  The leaves are similar to each other, but show a degree of variation as well.  The difference being that I wanted the feathers to show the contours of the hawk's head. If the leaves were all similarly angled, the tree would look more like a topiary than a naturally growing ficus. I should also point out that this particular ficus is an evil ficus.  You really have to watch out for them, since they look just like any other ficus.

One Sunday morning I had the bright idea to ask several kids in my church's youth group to throw out some ideas for strange things to draw. One of them, Nash R., really delivered. While I'm not sure I'd spontaneously choose to draw a Japanese spider crab, in retrospect I'm glad I did.  Keeping the legs in proportion to each other was a huge pain, but as with any trial, it paid me with experience. I couldn't have asked for a much better result for this decapod.  If you've never heard of these things, I suggest reading up on them. You can't get a much more intimidating crustacean than a 12 foot, 40 pound crab.

In case the fact hasn't become obvious yet, I greatly prefer drawing organic shapes (e.g. animals) to drawing more angular objects with set proportions (e.g. buildings or automobiles). This is an exception to that rule.  This was another requested drawing, and in this case it was one of my students who made the request unsolicited.  He wanted me to draw a robot dog.  Now, those who know me also know that I'm a bit of a pushover when it comes to polite requests from kids (or adults for that matter), so after only a very slight hesitation I agreed. Thus was born (constructed?) the robotic dog. In case he ever happens to stumble across this particular blog post, I'd like to say to him "Thank you, Ethan S. for pushing me outside of my artistic comfort zone.  I really like the way this little pup turned out, and would likely have never tried it without your tenacious coaxing."

That about does it for this episode.  Tune in next post, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

-AH!

Canines and Primates and Birds, Oh My!

Okay, so more accurately one canine, two primates, and one bird.  Either way, you get the idea. Titles aren't my strong suit.  These don't really require a lot of explanation, so... yeah... here they are.

First up is an owl.  I didn't have a specific type of owl in mind as much as a generic concept of an owl.  Again, working without reference or any experience with feather dynamics, there are some issues (with the wings in particular) but I'm reasonably happy with the way he turned out.

Next up is a bulldog.  His eyes are kind of big, but I wouldn't change that. I like to make eyes a bit too large for extra emphasis on the emotion they can convey.  For example, this dog's eyes are saying "Where's my food?" It was also a great dog to choose for wrinkle shading practice.

Primates are a little easier for me since I have a long-held fascination with monkeys and apes.  Not a lot to say about this gorilla. I wasn't crazy about the fact that his ear was hidden in his fur in the reference pic I used.  When I added it in during the early sketching process, though, it didn't look right so I just went with the hidden ear.  He looks rather indifferent about it.

I'm usually hesitant to say too much good of my own art (a large part of my reasoning behind starting this blog), but this little guy is an exception.  I easily qualify him as one of my favorite drawings.  Like the bulldog he seems to portray his thoughts very well through his facial expression.  He seems to be thinking "Mmm... this is some tasty bamboo."  It isn't especially deep, but what do you expect from a monkey.

As a finishing note, I've found that posting just once a week is just doesn't seem like enough, so I'm working on a few possible weekly mid-week posts. Probably some rough sketches or doodles.  Eventually, I'll likely post some pics of paintings and wire sculptures I've done, too.  Again, any ideas for future drawings or art projects can be dropped as a comment below.

-AH!