Sketchblog: Horned Girls

Having fun with some portrait practice - someone nice gave me a new A4 sketchbook for my birthday, just as I reached the last page of my little one. Add in a fantastic Ravenna Table Easel that my wonderful parents found me for Christmas, and I went on a drawing spree (it's awesome, because otherwise I have perspective issues when drawing on a flat surface).

I grabbed various reference images - mostly magazine photos - and practiced some portrait sketching. And then I got creative and had fun adding horns - twisty, ram, deer, bull, imaginary horns. Whichever suited the face. I want to keep going with this series!

I've also got a new tablet arriving soon, so hopefully can paint some of these in ArtRage.

I like doing these because:
1. Portrait practice is always good, and I'm getting better at it (a higher percentage of my drawings actually make the 'is it worth showing online' quality test now)
2. The horns allow me to add my own spin, and engage the creative part of my brain, not just the 'angles and shadows' part.
3. It's interesting thinking up different types of horn!

I do need to make sure my reference picture is large enough though - it's hard to draw properly from a tiny thumb-sized image (as for the last two pictures), and makes it harder to mess around with the composition. Also, the scanner at University (first three pictures) is a hundred times better than the new/old one at work (the old one broke, we have a temporary crappy stand-in).