Another horse attempt! Bad Drawing #42!

I took another attempt a horse, same pose, with reference.

Old Version:


New version:


Not quite as awesome as I saw it in my head. Mostly because in my head I'm not super lazy.

I lost interest in this drawing about the time I finished drawing the nostril. Horses just aren't my thing.

Probably why I hated working on Spirit so much.

Anyways, Christmas is tomorrow, and that means that I can finally post some drawings that were done as "gifts".

Seeyas next week.

Merry Christmas.

A.... Horse? Bad Drawing #41!!!

6...7 (?) years ago I worked on Dreamworks Animation's "Spirit: Stallion of the Cinnaron" as an assistant animator. For a year straight I drew that damn horse in every position imaginable.

That sounds perverted.

Anyways, last night Arlyn, Mika and I went to Montana's with my parents for my mother's birthday. As is always the case at Montana's, we had a paper table cloth and crayons to draw with.

I decided to draw a horse.


I have no idea what happened. I assumed I could remember what a horse looked like, how its head is structured, but as I put crayon to tablecloth, I drew a blank.

Even as I lied to myself and told myself "Self, that's gotta be sorta close..." I knew it was bad - nay, Terrible. (ha... "nay")

I looked up Spirit when I got home.


Ouch.

Well whatever. I'm not a 14 year old girl! I'm not just supposed to know what a horse looks like.

I'll do better.

Mountie Doodle! Bad Drawing #40!

To give what is essentially just a doodle, and not an actual effort at drawing, let's say this is a tribute to my Father.


See... it's a Mountie. My Dad was RCMP. He also had a mustache.

I learned the trick of hiding the hands behind the character, rather than trying to draw them, from Mika last night.

Disney at one point had the licensing rights to the RCMP, so, can you find Mickey in the doodle?!

Yeah it's not hard.

I'll try to draw for real eventually.

This is just sad... Doodles? Bad Drawing #39

Still haven't been drawing.

At this rate I'm NEVER going to get all the bad drawings out of me.

However, yesterday, my friend Sam called me at work while I was watching some edits. Without thinking, for the first time in weeks, I started drawing.

Unfortunately it was on my actual edit notes.


Lets break this down...

To the top left appear to be two "renderings" of Tie Fighters.


Those especially suck because, #1, how nerdy am I that when I mindlessly draw, it's a TIE fighter and what looks like a bent wing TIE fighter or Tie andvanced X1 (Vaders TIE)?

And, #2, the TIE fighter is completely wrong. The side wings don't have 8 panels, they have 6. Durrrr. Turn in my nerd badge.

What the hell is this? A strange otherworldly structure? I building from a long forgotten dream? A vision of the cup if Christ?


Stay tuned... if I find this subconscious image in the real world, I will let you know.

Below appears to be another structural absurdity. With numbers. Numbers that appear to be my Thomas the Tank Engine editing notes. I'm pretty sure I could build this and Vancouver Parks Board would put it in the middle of some local greenery as art.


Also there appears to be a frame beside it?

Sam and I got talking about French Bulldogs at some point... I assume that is why the following image exists.


His name is Desmond. I will own him one day.

Finally, I appear to have started doodling a superhero. This happens a lot when I doodle. Maybe it's because I secretly dream of bursting from behind my computer, running out of the studio and flying away to fight crime. But I think mostly it comes from just drawing a stick figure is boring. Masks and capes make everything cooler.


I tried to figure out what was going on in the bottom of the superhero doodle...


Then I realized it's just another superhero... running.


A+

So yeah. While there are quite a few drawings here, I can't give each a credit. It was all done in one session, completely subconsciously. If I were to frame the piece, someone would say "what a crappy drawing", not "What a crappy collection of little drawings".

So there you have it. I clearly need to be drawing more... just gotta get through Christmas.

Bad from the PAST! Drawing #38

Since all I've been doing is dealing with Christmas-awesomeness til I pass out on the couch, Baileys in hand while Scrooged plays on the TV in the background, I haven't really been sketching.

And I want to... Bad.

So I will. In fact, I will tonight! I think.

I want to do a couple of Christmas drawings in the spirit of the season. So maybe I'll do that...

Until then, here's a "Bad From the PAST!".

I did this last year for my brother, for Christmas. His reaction was pretty much "What... why?" And that's about it.



I call it "ROBOMG!" (Just now. I called it that just now. Creative, no?)

Follow up on "MS PAINT AWESOMENESS!! - Bad Drawing #35"

As stated in "Bad Drawing #35", Arlyn's brother was going to Mexico, so I sent him a really crappy MS Paint drawing of something I wanted him to look for....

Well, he has returned, and with the following for me!


These will be used in an upcoming A Million Bad Drawings project.

"My hand... is... terriblydrawn!" Bad Drawing #37

During our lunch break at work, Kevin and I have been watching original Star Trek episodes. They are a little slow paced, but awesome none the less.

I'm kinda getting why people think Shatner is so cool.

Anyways, Kevin was sick today, so I couldn't watch without him. Feeling empty with no Trek to watch, I doodled this on the Edit room wipe board:



Yeah I don't know what happened with his hand holding his little tri-corder talking thing (whatever it's called). I can only assume it got mangled in some awesome fight, and this drawing captured the moment he first noticed, as he pulled out his phone thing to call for help.

Yeah.

More bad coming... and A BAD FROM THE PAST! (Drawing #36)

I haven't stopped drawing... in fact, I just did a piece that ate up all my free drawing time. I can't post it though (cause it's a Christmas present) but holy crap did it stress me out and push my shitty skillz to their limit.

Overall, I'm happy with it. I'm not completely ashamed to give it as a present, and I got TONS AND TONS of crappy, shitty, bad drawings as I worked to my final work.

So until I have time to do some more crap, here's a "Bad From the Past"



I call it "Finger Fish"

MS PAINT AWESOMENESS!! - Bad Drawing #35

I had an idea for a little project I wanted to do, but in order to do it, I would need a skull pipe.

When I was in Mexico a few months ago, I actually attempted to buy one. Somewhere in between paying for it, and it going into the bag, it got lost.

Clerk fail.

Anyways, Arlyn's brother, Ariel, is going to Mexico in the next couple of days, so I sent him an e-mail asking me to pick me up a new pipe.

In order for him to get a better idea of what I need, I drew up a quick picture in MS PAINT.


Yup, he should be able to find one now just fine.

PUMPKIN THAT WASN'T! - Bad Drawing #34

I did this drawing for a pumpkin that ended up a total fail.


The idea was that the pumpkin skin was pulled and nailed back to reveal the skull beneath. Kinda "Buffy Demon" design.

It was a disaster, and I ended up chopping up the pumpkin and dumping the plastic bag of pumpkin guts in the dumpster. It wasn't pretty.

Poor pumpkin.

Snake Eyes Doll by P-Nut Gallery! (Based on Bad Drawing #16)

So, Arlyn of "The P-Nut Gallery" has finished the first of two dolls for friends of mine from Calgary. Both these childhood pals recently had younglings, and I thought it would be cool if Arlyn could make them dolls of their favorite G.I.JOE characters.



CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL POSTING!

This is "Snake Eyes" for little John Swingler.



You can check out more P-Nut Gallery HERE.

Next up, STORM SHADOW!

OGRE ASSIGNMENT! Drawing #29, #30, #31, #32, #33!

These are the truly bad drawings I was talking of in my post a couple posts back...

Mika gave me an assignment. Her and her friend, Maya, were in need of an ogre drawing for a class assignment.

This was terrifying to me. First off, drawing an ogre is in the realm of "fantasy" art. Fantasy art (fairies, gnomes, fairies, so on...) are generally terrible. I can't think of a single thing that can make me lose interest in an artist quicker than that artist telling me they love drawing fairies. I'm not saying that you can't be amazing at drawing fairies, or that it doesn't have it's audience, but it's like when my acting teacher in film school told me she was a professional clown...

Anyways, I was terrified. I'm not very good at drawing normal every day things, yet alone anything from the fantasy genre. I'm not WETA. WETA could knock an ogre out of the park. I'm not only being asked to draw an ogre, but I'm being asked to draw an ogre at my film school level of talent.

Reluctantly, I agreed. At least it's a challenge!

I asked Mika for the pose she wanted it in... This is what she gave me.



This is also the attitude I got with most of my sketches. Especially my first attempt.


She didn't like the skinny legs. She also asked why I was drawing in pink. HEY!, pink goes back to my days assisting Dreamworks Feature animation, I'll have you know! She also wanted wider eyes for some reason. Also, this sketch looks like he's farting or shitting a spikey rock. It was actually me just scribbling a club there in case I wanted him packing a weapon... yeah.

Anyway, I tried thickening up the legs a bit.



For those who don't get what I mean when I say I haven't improved since Film School, FOURTEEN years ago, THIS is what I'm talking about. I drew the following drawing in 1996. Have a look between the drawing below and the drawing above.



Need I say more?

Anyways, panic was setting in, Mika was hounding me on the deadline. I was terrified that these grade 4 kids would rip my drawing to shreds. I actually imagined a bunch of 9 year olds saying my ogre drawing was a worse design than SHREK. The next one was a quick wipe board sketch I did at work...


I finally got a rough drawing out in my notebook at work. The rough ink drawing seemed to capture, in a rough way, what I wanted. I thought it would literally be the best I could do.


I got home and asked Mika for the poster paper I was supposed to draw it on. It was WAY thinner and longer than I thought it would be. I didn't want to make the ogre any taller, it already looked shitty enough. I decided to put the ogre standing on a pile of skulls.

This also fulfilled my Tyler Hoolaeff drawing suggestion. (I do however plan on attempting to draw BETTER skulls then these...)

Mika approved my final design and colored it in. She blacked out one of the eyes though because, as she explained "Maya had to poke one out" (thus her needing the ogre to have big eyes)


So my first commission is complete. WAY too stressful. Mika colored the whole thing in. She colored the bottom skulls as if they were part of background thus making the pile of skulls the ogre was standing on look kinda small. Oh well - She's the art director on this one. Whattya do?

I really hate that final drawing.

A Bad From the PAST! Drawing #23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 - HANDS!

A while back, Ar and I got all inspired to start drawing more, and challenged each other with weekly assignments. Week #1 was "HANDS". We got super excited, bought sketchbooks, erasers, pencils, and then sat on the couch every night that week, drawing away...

My shading isn't the best, but I held my hand out in front of me, and went for it.



No, these are not a girls hands. These are hands that never work hard labor.




Yes, I did a shocker pose. I'm 13.

Never got around to a "week 2" assignment. We got inspired to watch Veronica Mars on DVD instead.

Pumpkins! Drawing #20, 21, 22,

Okay so they're not exactly "DRAWINGS" in the traditional sense, but they started out as drawings... these would just be the final renderings...



This would be the first pumpkin of the year, and the second pumpkin I've ever carved. It's also the only pumpkin where I took a picture of the original drawing.



And here it is, lit up, with Arlyn and Mika's pumpkins... pretty sweet.



This is the "Jenn Taylor" Pumpkin and next to it is the "Teen Chan" Pumpkin. Jenn and Teen are in Singapore, and pumpkins cost about 30 bucks there, so Arlyn and I carved a couple for them. I did the worried Taylor pumpkin, Arlyn did the Happy Teen pumpkin.



The final pumpkin I did for the year was for a Monster Factory competition. Monster Factory is a Toronto based company that makes wicked monsters.



You can check out their monsters at www.monsterfactory.net. I recently bought one for Arlyn for our 3 year anniversary... pretty awesome.



But back on topic...

So Monster Factory had a competition to make a monster pumpkin - bonus points if you did a design with one of their monsters. I chose to do EMMIT.



This was the final design...








Next post... some truly, TRULY bad drawings... ones that will live up to this blog's title.

UPDATE

So turns out I won the Monster Factory contest!

"And
the winner of the Monster Pumpkin Carving Contest is Ellery
VanDooyeweert! Ellery's incredible Emmitt pumpkin, with its light-up
tattoos, really impressed us. But we also fell in love with all the
many other great monster pumpkin entries! Thanks to everyone who
entered for getting so creative for this contest. Hope... you had a fun and festive (and spooky) Halloween!"

These two monsters will be coming in the mail soon...



Well then... Maybe "A Million Bad Drawings" will have to enter MORE CONTESTS!!!

RAAAAWRRR!!! Drawing #19

This is a dinosaur sketched out on Arlyn's nephew, Isaac's, birthday card.



The pressure was on. I've seen thousands of T-Rex renderings in my life, how hard could it be to draw from memory?


Harder than I thought. Pretty menacing, eh?

That's actually only one claw showing... though it looks like I intended it as two. I think I'm going to try and do a T-Rex again in the same pose but using actual reference.

But first I have a commission. Mika needs a troll. So far it's been terrible. A couple really bad drawings are coming up!

Pascal Campion

This vid was linked around Facebook today, and it's pretty damn inspirational and fitting for this blog.

"The more you draw the better you're going to get. you're not going to go backwards, you're not going to forget anything, you're just going to get better."

- Pascal Campion

Inspirational Artists: Pascal Campion from Onyx Cinema, Inc. on Vimeo.

I've never seen this guys stuff before, but I have now signed up for his "Sketch of the Day" at Pascalcampion.com.

Amazing artist.

And now I am off to draw! Or watch TV... probably watch TV.

Bad Robot! (Drawing #18)

Yeah it's a quick doodle... still counts!

Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes baby toys! Drawing #16 and #17.

Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, my two best friends were Jeff and Kevin Swingler. They lived across the street from us, and our families were really tight.

My brother and I went through just about every toy fad there was in the 80's with Jeff, Kevin, and their little brother, David. But the biggest obsession was probably G.I. JOE.

Of all the figures we had, Jeff's favorite was "Storm Shadow", the white Ninja who fought for Cobra, and Kevin was partial (I believe) to "Snake Eyes" The black Ninja, brother to Storm Shadow, who fought for G.I. JOE.



Recently, both Jeff and Kevin had baby boys. So, I figured it would be cool to design some toys to have made and send to them. Below are my designs for "Storm Shadow" and "Snake Eyes" stuffed ninjas. Each will come with a baby blanket with the ninja clan symbol on them.



My girlfriend Arlyn, she of peanut gallery fame, will be making them a reality... she is my hero.