Getting The Kids Involved
Today was a lot of fun. I spent the morning at my parents house sitting in their big backyard, drawing while my three monsters played in a dirt patch. I got a lot of drawing done and I was able to get a couple of the kids in on the drawing action!
I decided that I will be focusing on easy-ish, cartoony things for now until I build my confidence more. I am going to be doing strictly sketches with minimal coloration. I think this will keep the process more on the fun side than the stressful side.
I got my six-year-old son interested, and he sat and drew with me for a while, I put a picture of all of his drawings underneath my slideshow. We started with a cute little unicorn. I drew it in the small version that is in the slideshow, but I also drew it larger on an 8x11 paper for my niece. The hooves got cut off, but otherwise it looked the same! We moved on to an arctic fox, and a Chibi girl. My son kind of veered off and started doing his own thing after the fox.
A short while after I finished the Chibi girl, my eleven-year-old niece got home. She was really excited to see the unicorn I drew for her. I had to leave to go to class (I go to night school during the summer at Boston College, working toward my Bachelor's) but when I got home, my niece was still up and wanted to draw some more! Of course, I jumped at the opportunity.
We drew a begging puppy and a watermelon slice. I kept trying to get my niece excited for drawing, telling her the earlier she gets into doing it for fun, the quicker she'll pick it up. She was a little disheartened with her puppy, but it really wasn't bad! She chose the watermelon slice as the next tutorial. I'll have to get pictures of her drawings and display them up here with mine and my son's.
As far as successes and failures for today, I would consider most of them successes. While the Chibi girl is cute, I don't think it looks close enough to the original to be considered a success, but I'll give it like a half thumbs-up. I am happy with how it came out, but it needs some serious improvement. My favorite drawing of the day was the begging puppy; I was definitely surprised by how well that turned out!
I would say, while I didn't learn anything technical, I'm definitely getting more comfortable with the swirls and following the tutorials. I can't wait until I can start drawing what I see in my head without a tutorial!
Here are the tutorials I utilized for today's drawings (including links in case the videos don't work correctly):