A Drawing A Day: Day 8

Managing to squeeze in sketches is tough, but I'm enjoying the challenge of doing something and getting it out to the internet. I don't know if anyone actually reads this blog at all, but the something thousand page views can't all be bots, surely?

This sketch is one of my favourites so far, and I' really like the form it takes. It's given me quite a lot of ideas for my next venture. My next venture is to start doing some work and setting up a shop in and selling from Etsy. I'm sure you'll hear about that in due course, when it starts to happen. This sketch was mostly inspired by my faceted gemstone sketch, and I wanted to turn it into something more designer-ly, and make it something useful. In this case, it's a lamp!

A Drawing A Day: Day 7

Sketching is getting a little harder each day, but such is the nature of this time that I'm working. I work at a small restaurant/theatre just down the road from where I live. The business in this place focuses and gets heavier around the Christmas period, and having time for other things can become quite taxing. Sketching is most likely going to fall apart directly after Christmas, but hopefully I will pick it up again as soon as possible.

Today's sketch is a very conceptual idea about a table which is inspired by a piece of crinkled paper. I'd love to be able to create a piece of furniture like this that has very subtle changes in the surface that might not be immediately obvious at first, but if one stands back could provide a strange light play across the surface. The slight variance in angles and shapes of the table could be an interesting talking point for users as well as a way of dividing the space between the users.

A Drawing A Day: Day 6

One of the things that I did this year was acquire a Wacom tablet, which I plan to make good use of this year trying out sketching and drawing digitally. One of the things that I really want to get into is the process of designing and drawing landscapes. I'm not a huge fan of characters, but I really love landscapes and cityscapes in concept art. They're something I really want to get better at, and achieve more in.

A simple sketch, this one, but I really wanted to just try out some things. I wanted to see how some shapes would translate into a city-like form.

A Drawing A Day: Day 5

I took a bit of a different route today, and decided to do something of a video game sort. I love the amount of effort that video game companies and film companies put into their weapon design, so I decided to try my hand at something. Aaaaand it looks like a nerf gun. I went way too over the top with it, and it doesn't look threatening at all. I think I'm going to give this another go at a later date, see how it goes then.

It just looks a bit too stocky and far too chunky to work as a serious weapon. Oh well, sketching will continue!

A Drawing A Day: Day 4

Today I tried my hand at something a little more methodical and technical. I went and decided to sketch a feature bookshelf at my girlfriend's place. The bookshelf has a really awesome structure that looks really simple, but when you actually try to draw it, it's any but simple.

The intersecting lines and multi-levelled form makes for a very hard thing to sketch, especially if you decide to do it in two-point-perspective, as I did. The repeating pattern can actually make things more difficult when you do the drawing in two-point, as the front-most parts can overlap in ways you don't expect. I actually had three previous goes at the sketch, but it resulted in a big ol' mish mash of lines. I found the best way to do this sketch was to draw the lines in the foreground, and then work everything out from those lines.

The bookcase itself is a lot of fun to look at, and I enjoyed the challenge of sketching it!

A Drawing A Day: Day 3

I recently acquired a rather lovely piece of Industrial Design, in the form of a new water bottle (I needed one!). If you guys haven't definitely check out Kor, they make fantastic drink bottles that are awesome, affordable, and just look great. That, and they also almost always run specials on pricing, which is kind on the wallet (or not, depending on how you look at it!).

I actually drew the sketch of the water bottle before the bottle arrived through the delivery, drawing the shape and form from memory of the picture of the bottle design. That's why it looks a bit different to the photo!

I really enjoy using the small lines and hatching to create form and value. It's a fun way of implying depth and shade. Yum. Glug glug glug.

A Drawing A Day: Day 2

This sketching is also giving me a chance to run in my new lens on my semi-new camera. I'm using a 40mm fixed-length lens with f2.8, which is proving to be an awful lot of fun. It's got a fantastic depth of field, and takes stunning portrait shots, as well as pretty good close-ups.

The sketch for today was all about creating depth and form through shading. I loved this gemstone drawing I found on Pinterest, so I decided to do a much more basic version of it, using purely lines to create shaded areas versus non-shaded areas. Definitely going to experiment with this technique a little bit more.

A Drawing A Day: Day 1

So, to keep myself busy over the holiday period, I've decided to get my sketching up to scratch, so as to make the time I spend away from uni a little bit more worthwhile for my future. Gaming has a lot of perks in the fun department, but in terms of actually contributing to my future, maybe a little less so. Oh well, one can't always be perfect, isn't that the case?

Life kind of trudges along at it's own pace, but I kind of wish a little bit that I was back at university already. Seems a little bit strange, I know, but I enjoy the challenges that it poses me. Work and family life isn't challenging in the same way. I'm looking forward to being done with my degree and actually doing work in a field that works for me.