Sketchbook Project #2 – Facial Expressions

Posted on December 11, 2021 by SusanG

I took no time off after completing Sketchbook Project #1. I considered it, taking a short break. That was part way through that project. I was so focused on what I was doing that for a short time I entertained the idea of taking a little time before I started the next project so I could work on some other art during the time I was working on that sketchbook art. I’d done really good by setting aside the time to do those drawings so I thought I could use that time for other art instead. But ultimately, I decided against it. I had started a habit and I didn’t want to break that. I had also, already decided what the next sketchbook was going to be…Facial Expressions.

11/17/2021 – the first day

Many years ago, from early on in my drawing career I drew faces, portraits. I had an art instructor in high school who showed me how to draw eyes and it stuck. It took a couple of years before I really got to drawing portraits. I used to draw different celebrities, some singers, some actors, particularly from Star Trek. I found that I could go to events where the celebrities were and get them to autograph the portrait that I drew of them. It was cool. And fun.

So here I am, so many years later and I’m thinking about what I can do to improve my drawing and sketching. I’m not really in a position to try to take a drawing course, which I have done in the past. Then I remembered that I have some great reference books I picked up a few years ago. One of them is a book of facial expressions. It has several different models of different ages, ethnicities, and gender each making multiple faces or facial expressions. So, I decided that I would take a sketchbook and fill it with these facial expressions. And instead of just filling the sketchbook as quickly as I could, I would approach it like I did the first Sketchbook project. One a day.

The one a day keeps me from rushing through and it keeps me drawing daily which I am finding very important. It’s like practicing music or Taekwondo, too many days off in between and things can get rusty.

11/20/2021 – teeth

I try to choose expressions that will be a bit of a challenge. They have lots of teeth or are at an angle off from looking straight ahead. After I did a few, I realized that part of what does make this extra challenging, besides just the years since I have done portrait type drawing, is that when I was doing that work nearly all the faces I drew were forward facing with a fairly neutral look. Almost nothing in three quarters or profile. And I only remember one where the subject was smiling with teeth showing.

So far this has been a good exercise. It was a little rough getting started. Like I said, I haven’t done faces to any extent in several years. I think I’m starting to get comfortable again. At least it’s not taking quite so long to get all the main pieces in place. I tend to draw more by what I see, and, in the past, I have always started with the eyes. With this exercise I generally start with what seems to be the dominate feature of the expression. It might be the eyes or sometimes the mouth. I think I have done one that the nose was what I started with. Choosing to start with what stands out is making a big difference. It is less constraining. And it might be part of what I took from the last project, and I didn’t realize it.

And that’s the reason for doing these exercises. I adopt new methods and techniques and then carry them on into the next thing I do. Yes, I could learn some of this from a drawing course, or maybe not. Sometimes it really takes doing it to learn it. And it takes doing it to develop the working method that works best for each individual artist.

So that’s the current project. I’m working on a sketchbook full of facial expressions. The rules I’m decided on for this is to try to choose a picture of a different model and different expression for each day. Though I have used the same model twice a couple of times. I also try not to skip. So, the next model in the book is who/what I work from. I do this to keep from being too lazy and only using models or expressions that I think are easy to do.  

11/25/2021 – more teeth

As with the last project, it doesn’t keep me from working on other art as well. In fact, I have definitely been doing that. I but to fulfill the requirements for this it has to be a facial expression in the sketchbook I have designated for the project.

As I said, I am working on other art as well. Both digital and non-digital. And I’m very excited about some of that. I can’t wait to share more. Which will likely be in the next post. I am closer to having all the pictures of the last project, or rather, Sketchbook Project #1 ready to post. So, keep a watch for that. For now, I’ve included a few pictures from the Facial Expressions project. Also, if you are interested in the book that I’m using for reference you can find it here on Amazon. I have no affiliation with Amazon and get nothing in return if you purchase from them or not so if you find the book somewhere else that you prefer to patronize, I’m all for it.

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One Thing and Then Another

Posted on December 2, 2021 by SusanG

Remember that snowball? The one that was not very big rolling down the not very big hill. It picked up a bit of extra stuff as it was rolling. Some grass, a twig or two, and a bit of dirt. That is to say that while I got a lot of things done that I needed to over the last 10 or 12 days, everything took more than I expected. It either took more time or it required additional steps or both.

I did get quite a bit done though. Not only did I get the new holiday design published, and the store cleaned up, I also changed the header for the store. I’m working on a smaller icon to go where that grey store front image is, and it’s almost done. Changing the store header, and the fact that I put the website on the back of the shirts, prompted me to re-write the web page for SusanG Productions. It was on my list. I knew it needed to be done. And then when I remembered I put it on the t-shirts, well, it got done. I took a screenshot of what the site looked like before I changed it and then what it looks like now. I hope you agree that this is much easier on the eyes.

Old site design on the left – New site design on the right

I took care of some backend maintenance on the websites. I found out that a backup solution I had wasn’t doing what I thought it was, so I had to get that all worked out. The good news is that it comes with added security and now the sites say https. The frustrating part was everything that they, and I had to go through to get it set up. It took longer than expected. But it’s set up now and appears to be working as advertised.

I also decided to sign up for or join Buy Me a Coffee. It’s a little like a bare bones Patreon with the flexibility of allowing one-time tips or donations. The initial sign up was quick and easy but to make your creator page active you have to add a pay-out method. I filled that out, but it took longer than anticipated to get approval. Once that part was done the rest was quick and easy. Thankfully because as it turned out, when I went to add it to my blog things got a little wonky.

Stippled Giraffe artwork
Stippled Giraffe

It wasn’t the Buy Me a Coffee plugin to WordPress that was a problem, though that’s how I found the problem. It so happens that I have been neglecting my widgets. Somewhere along the way, WordPress has changed how widgets work. Widgets are those bits you see to the right of this post. When I went in to add the widget for Buy Me a Coffee to the side list, I got a mess of errors. One, appeared to be related to the added security that I just got and was fixed with a call into my hosting provider. The other was due to my neglecting my widgets. Just trying to add the one resulted in a couple of hours of clean up and conversion of all the widgets from legacy widgets to blocks.

I dealt with several other things over the last few days that were much like this. I’m glad I was on vacation from the day job so that I was able to take the time I needed to get everything addressed as best I could. There are several things that I still need to look into and change, fix, resolve, adjust and what not. I’ll get to them. I just keep a running list.

At least, over the last few days, I have had an opportunity to also work on some art. I have my Sketchbook Project #2 – Facial Expressions that I have been working on. It’s another daily drawing exercise. I’ve done some experimenting with a different medium. And I created a full piece of artwork.

There is still a bunch of technical stuff that I need to work on. I’m going to skip that and look at some of the fun stuff, or more interesting stuff coming up.

  • I realized that I need new business cards. As much as I like the ones I have, they are running low, and I think I need something a little different. That involves new artwork. I have an idea to go back to something I’ve used for other things before. I still have to create it and see if it is going to be what I want.
  • I have my daily sketchbook project.
  • I still have plans to post the pictures from the Sketchbook Project #1. I know where I’m going to post it, I just need to get a little time to do the work.
  • I’m experimenting with working with markers as well as pen. I have some Copic markers coming that I want to try out. I have heard great things about them. It will be a new way of creating art for me, and I’m not sure how it will go. A new an adventure in art.
  • I’ll be posting on my Buy Me a Coffee page as well as here. For those posts, I’m going to try to keep it more art specific instead of the occasional random (hopefully not too rambling) things I sometimes post here.

I know there is more that I can’t think of right now. You’ll have to check back to see what’s next. Cheers!

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Holiday Cards for 2021

Posted on November 23, 2021 by SusanG

Surprise! The holiday card for 2021 is here!

It’s a surprise to me as well. I didn’t expect to do one this year. Then, this design happened and begged to be made into a card. The style is different than what I usually create, and I think it’s a bit more fun and whimsical.

As I was working on it, I realized that I was really loving the tree even without the decorations. When a family member mentioned they really liked that version as well, I decided it also needed to be made into a card.

And now for the really big news. For those of you who like t-shirts, and holiday themed t-shirts you can get both of the new designs on a t-shirt.

Happy Holidays!

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Sketchbook Project 1 and Done

Posted on November 22, 2021 by SusanG

I completed my sketchbook project a few days ago. It started out I was going to participate in Inktober and then it became Drawtober, and then it just became the Sketchbook Project when I decided to fill the sketchbook with a drawing everyday and not to stop at the end of the month.

Wow. What a great project. I am really glad I did it. I had a lot of fun with it, amazingly.

I have a large pastel painting of an octopus planned so I got some practice with this guy

It wasn’t what I expected at all, and that’s without having any setup, guidance or ground rules beyond that I had to draw in the sketchbook every day. I could draw other things too, but they didn’t count towards my daily sketchbook drawing. It had to be in the sketchbook. Even with those few parameters I must admit, at first, I was a little daunted. I wasn’t sure I would be disciplined enough to do it. After all, I was the only person I was accountable to for doing it. After a while, that wasn’t an issue at all.

The hardest part of the whole project was deciding what to draw each day. This was the case from the very beginning. It got a little easier when I started using my book on frogs and the book of Australian birds. But there was still the challenge of deciding which one to draw. When I started thinking of things that might be fun to draw and finding reference photos, that helped. I would find two or three great references to work from, or even two or three different creatures to draw and that would give me a couple of days that I didn’t have to figure out what to draw.

The next biggest challenge was time. I wasn’t starting my drawings in the morning and working on them all day. I was usually starting after dinner, and sometimes even later. They were one of the last things I did for my day. At first, because of what I was drawing, and the fact that I was sitting on my couch while I was drawing, they didn’t take too long. Most took less than and hour. At some point I decided to clean off my art table and adjust it back to an angle and start using that. I think that’s when the draw times crept up from an hour to an hour and a half and even two hours. And I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t rushing through to get it done by a particular time. It took as long as it took. The point was to do the drawing to a reasonable likeness in a relatively short amount of time.

A stag beetle. The underside is really interesting, it’s on my list to draw.

Relatively short is, well, relative. Many of my drawing in the past that have had lots of detail and thorough shading have taken me several hours over several days. So, a couple of hours is relatively short. But I’ve read about people that can do something like I did for this project in a matter of minutes. I hope to get to that point. And this project is a step towards that.

Which brings me to, what did I get out of it? And would I do it again? I’ll answer the last question first. Absolutely. I would do it again. In fact, I’ve started Sketchbook Project 2 which I’ll tell you about in a moment. As to what I got out of it. That might be harder to answer, but I’ll try.

First off, plain, and simple, I got practice and discipline. I got to refresh my drawing skills. While I have created a few pieces in the last couple of years, I have not created near as much art as I have at times in years past. And even then, some of that was not as consistent. Drawing practice is not the same as creating something 3D in the computer. It requires a somewhat different skill and way of seeing things. So, it was good to really exercise those muscles.

Looks like something I’d find in the cantina in Star Wars

I also got a renewed appreciation for my own ability. Just before I started the project, I was looking through some old sketchbooks and was surprised at some of what I found that I had done. All pleasant surprises. It was not like I was looking at all of it and cringing. Rather I was looking at it somewhat surprised that it was my work. And yet it was. There it was in my sketchbook with my signature or initials. I just didn’t remember creating some of it. I had stepped away from drawing on a regular basis for so long that I had forgotten what I could do. I think sometimes we can get lost from the art in us and then we forget what we can do until we are reminded. This project was that reminder for me. And not because the pieces that I have created in the last couple of years weren’t good, more because, once I had working a plan, I was creating good pieces in a short amount of time, every day. It showed or reminded me that I can do that.

And finally, the best thing I got out of it was fun. I had a lot of fun with the creatures I chose to draw. There are a couple that I didn’t get to that I still want to do. Besides birds and frogs, as a challenge to myself I chose some things that I would not have thought I would draw. As example, I don’t like bugs, and yet I saw a really cool spider and decided to draw it. And the Stag Beetle was cool to look at, so it needed to be drawn. I also found, in looking for creatures to draw, that nature, has a sense of humor, and is great inspiration for sci-fi characters, as well as human characters. There is a turtle that reminds me of something out of the cantina scene in Star Wars. That was fun. The screaming Cassowary was amazing to draw. And the Kookaburra made me think of a person I know.

Preview of the next Sketchbook Project

For the very last drawing I was going to draw another frog, but I was struggling with it and decided that since I only had a short amount of time to work on it, I would start over and do something else. I chose to do a preview of the next sketchbook project. So, I did a sketch of a guy making an interesting face.

And that’s the next sketchbook project. I have this great book of facial expressions that I bought for reference several years ago. I decided that I will fill a sketchbook with daily drawings or sketches of various facial expressions from the book. I’ll go into a little more detail and reasoning behind the project in another post because I have some history with drawing faces and there is more to tell. I just wanted to share a little heads-up as to what I had moved on to after finishing the Sketchbook Project 1.

I’m sharing a few more pictures from the sketchbook project for your enjoyment. I’m still working on how and where I want to present all of the pictures, in chronological order but I hope to have that ready soon. I’ve been working on several other things as you might have noted from the Snowball article. Those continue and I’ll have an update on some of that soon as well so stay tuned to this blog for lots more projects and updates.

And a Platypus
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Snowball Down a Hill

Posted on November 16, 2021 by SusanG

It’s not a very big snowball and not a very big hill, the general effect is still the same. Once things get rolling, they start to build. That’s how things have been working out for me for the last month or so. And that means changes, general stuff happening, and the need for some clean up and refining. And yes, a fair amount of that involves art of some form or another.

Frog

Probably the biggest happening, change, etc. is that I finally, after more than, I don’t know how many years, have put up a webpage for the root domain for the blog. Yes. Gnasus.com now has a webpage. Seriously, check it out. The animation at the top of the page is the one I have been meaning to create for quite a long time. I finally learned how to do it which meant that it was time to get a webpage up. Warning, though it works on all formats, it is not yet adapted, or adaptable for mobile, it’s really big. I still need to figure out how to make it dynamic enough to compensate for the different formats. I figure that a webpage, that is a little bit big is still better than no webpage.

I have continued to work on the sketchbook project. I am just a day from completing it. It is my plan to post all the drawings, I just haven’t decided how to go about it, and where to post them. I’ll include another one or two here for your enjoyment. It’s been a fun project and I will be writing another post about it once I’ve completed it.

Lizard

A friend visited my Zazzle store, and even bought some cards. Which is always a cool and exciting thing. That happened to remind me that I want to go in and clean things up some. I have a few cards I am going to unpublish. I may remake the art or make something similar and repost them, but there are a couple of designs I think I am going to retire. I still expect to be adding new card designs. As soon as I get them created.

Provided my snowball keeps rolling, in addition to the cleaning of the Zazzle store, I will also be making some changes to the blog site in the next couple of weeks. And, in the event that snowball really gets moving, I’ll be making some updates to a couple of my other websites. Or perhaps, getting a new card ready. There are so many things I am working on right now, either in my head, digitally, or on paper, and they are all progressing, as opposed to stagnating, so who knows what I’ll be working on, and posting about next.

Hello.
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