Random Sketching

I haven't got a real plan yet for the ol' blog. I have some previous projects & some future projects that I'd like to share. Other than that, I'm winging it at the moment. I'd like to get back to to sharing my process, too, and that's what I'm going to do here today.

Inspiration has been hard to come by. I decided to just randomly scribble and see what happens.

I've been interested in sewing pattern illustrations and this pose was inspired by one from the seventies that I found on Pinterest.

 

 Because I knew from the beginning that I'd work on this digitally, I snapped a quick picture with my phone instead of scanning it. And really, depending on the setup, a phone can work just as well as a scanner. I opened it in Photoshop for editing. It's possible to edit this in other programs - I've been tinkering with Affinity - but Photoshop is my go-to. Most of what I do would work in most photo editing software.

 

 The head was a little big so I reduced that. The torso felt a little long so I used the Warp tool (Edit>Transform>Warp) to shorten it. The sketch on the left is edited and the one on the right is the original. It's better but it still isn't quite what I want...

 

... So I tried a different head! That's what I love about digital art - the flexibility to experiment with different things all a the same time. I don't have to redraw the body or head or trace it etc. I just pop it into the computer and try something new.  I like the new head but the shoulder on the right side of the drawing feels like it's dropped too far.

 

 It's a subtle difference. The left is unedited and the right is edited. At this point, I'll work out a few more issues with the sketch and draw the line art.

 Staying in Photoshop, I reduced the opacity of my sketch and drew lines on the layer above. I used a brush meant to simulate  a 4H pencil. Typically, I like to draw in Sketchbook but since I was already using Photoshop, I just stuck with that. 

 

And here's what I came up with. On the left, the lines from the initial sketch. Then, I tweaked the torso a bit. In the third pose, I turned the torso to be more forward facing. Finally, on the right, I pulled the legs in together more, just to see what would happen. 

I'm not sure which I like the best yet. I'm not even sure what I'll do with it! But it was good to put pencil to paper.