More crap coming!

Been insanely busy working these last days, and haven't pulled out a sketchbook to work on anything. I have a script deadline for this Wednesday, and after that, I should be back to churning out crap drawings.

First up, I believe, will be "Ewok Walking Shih-tzu". I have collected some reference already, and am eager to get working on it.

Hopefully it will be a tribute to my Ewok-dog "Indiana".

Maybe I will even try and paint it. GASP!


(this is Indiana making it very difficult for me to work)

Birthday Card Fail! Drawing #7, #8, #9, #10

For my last birthday, my girlfriend's 8 year old daughter, Mika, gave me a birthday card she put a lot of work into. I felt I needed to do the same for her, and gave her the biggest fail card ever.

I had a vision for this card. She loves the Zelda games on her Nintendo DS, so I figured I would draw her as Link in my favorite style:


I would even draw our dog, Hurley, flying above her as a fairy.


This should have been pretty easy. I got out my sketchbook, and started trying to draw her in some sort of action pose.

First I thought her swinging down on a rope would be cool...


It never looked right to me. So I thought I would try just using an action pose I found of a knight wielding a sword, and translate it.


Okay that looks even more fucked, and I couldn't figure what to do with the arm NOT wielding the sword.

Fuck it. I'll just draw her standing and smilling. Yeah.



So there I had my rough pose. Now I could redraw it, tighter, on the card stock I had. Face was a little wonky, but I was pretty sure I could fix it. I only had ONE piece of card stock, so it had to be perfect the first try.

So I redrew the drawing and I liked it. I fixed the parts I didn't like in the rough, and it just had an over all stronger pose. (sorry no pic for this)

I now had to color it in. I borrowed some crayons, and looking at the assorted colors, figured this could look really cool.



I hadn't used crayons since I was 6. Holy fuck they suck. The Crayons smeared the pencil. When I tried to fix the pencil by erasing it, it smeared black. I tried to cover the black with more crayon - press harder with the crayon... it just looked awful.

So I figured I would just take my pen I use to doodle with, and black ink it... try to save it with a good outline. Well that didn't work either. The wax from the crayon gimped up the pen.

So I grabbed a sharpie! That will fix it!

The sharpie looked like ass.

I looked at it finished and was sad. the original, decent sketch was gone. I didn't even bother adding in Hurley.



I was thinking of throwing it out, but then realized I wouldn't have a chance to make another. I decided to give it to her anyways, and wrote "Happy Birthday" on it... but I didn't plan ahead and had to cram the "day" of "Birthday" tight together in the end.

The face looks flat and wonky! Sure, part of this was having to use a sharpie, thus giving her wonky eyes, but still...

And is that a shadow, or is she hovering over a hole and about to fall?

Maybe!

Oh well.

I filled in the rest of the card...



Yeah... Sorry about the CAR Mika... I even SPELLED "Card" wrong. Oh, I also missed the "n" in "would't"

Nice.

Ah well, she loved it anyways.

FUTURE BAD DRAWINGS!

I spend a lot of time staring at my sketchbook, not sure of what to draw. Part of it is fear, fear of what horrible wonk-faces, or nonsensical, perspective atrocities will hit the page.

The other part is not knowing what to actually sketch - so I put it to Facebook!

I posted the following as my status:


Ellery TableSaw VanDooyeweert Needs suggestions of awesome things to attempt to draw! I'm trying to develop a skill.

And here are the replies!

Tyler Hoolaeff - SKULLS!!!

Meeka Stuart Daigle - a monkey in a cosby sweater learning to moonwalk from Ronald Reagan.

Jenn Slingshot Brisson - life draw my tarantula!

Jenn Taylor - Fox!

Samanta Palomino - draw nipples on ur butt! (not going to happen)

Leslie Bear Jones - nudes of the late John Candy (um?)

Jayson Thiessen - mohammad (Nah... I like my head on my shoulders)

Teeny Bopper - ROCK BAND!... that is getting booooed at because they arent very good!

Arlyn Bantog - Unicorn Vs Manatee, Jawa Vs Orko, Ewok walking a Shih-Tzu

Robin Badr - Draw the silhouette of a blotchy butterfly. (What?...)


After reading them, and considering, I will definitely be doing the following:

1. Jawa Vs Orko
2. Ewok walking a Shih-Tzu
3. Unicorn Vs Manatee
4. Cosby Sweater Monkey with Reagan
5. Skulls (plan on lots - I like skulls)
6. Fox

MAYBE I'll try life drawing that tarantula, but as it stands... that thing scares the fuck out of me.

So stay tuned... I'm done my writing deadlines, so I have time to draw, or attempt to draw.

And yes, I know it could look like I'm fishing for compliments, but really, I'm terrible, and you'll see soon enough. heh.

Drawing #6

As stated in my last post, I did a terrible doodle of Heather on a tauntaun...



So I took another shot at it, but with reference....



while it may seem a HUGE improvement, I'm not happy.

I went into this attempting to do something really cool, and then found I couldn't draw a tauntaun in the pose I wanted even with all the reference I had (which all look pretty shitty... Need some GOOD Empire Strikes Back screen shots).

When I DID finally get a sketch done, it was basically just a copy of a photo. This kind of puts me at the same level of creativity as those Street artists, with their portrait drawings of "Scarface" and "Godfather". Also, I think the feet are wrong. Hard to find good tauntaun feet reference.

And is that Heather there under that scarf?! I dunno... could be! Guess we'll never know until someone figures out how to draw Heather.

Anyways, I'm actually going to try again and do a pose from my BRAIN, and not a google image search.

Pom Pom! (translation: Tauntaun) Drawing #5

A while back, I was making tauntaun noises at my desk. My office-mate, Heather, asked what I was doing, and when I told her, she responded with "What is a tawn tawn?"

I have to share an office with someone who doesn't know what a tauntaun is.

So, I grabbed a piece of paper, and on it I began to draw her riding a tauntaun.

In my head, I could see the drawing perfectly.

Heather, wearing her Hoth Snowsuit, sitting atop the majestic tauntaun. Her eyes squinted, searching, the horizon for Imperial probe droids....

This, is what I got on paper:



I don't even know where to start with this.

Even if I WAS going for something cutesy and cartoony, that looks NOTHING like a tauntaun.

So for my next drawing... I will redraw this, using reference.

I should also note, that as I told Heather I was redoing this drawing, she basically responded with "YAY! POM POM!"

*sigh*

A Bad From the Past! Drawing #4

I haven't had a chance to sketch out any crap lately. Too busy with writing stuff. So, instead, here's a "Bad From The Past"... a new feature on A Million Bad Drawings.

This showed up on Facebook today. A drawing I did in protest to a list of work my coordinator, Heather Renney, wrote on a wipe board for me to do by the end of the day.


The mouse was very angry about all the exports.

As you can see, I have little patience for connecting lines or making sure lines don't intersect. Rather than carefully drawing ears that make sense, or are the same size, I just quickly throw down the lines.

The mouse is giving the middle finger - if you can distinguish anything out of that mess of a hand.

And what the hell with the feet? One is especially gimpy.

And why does it look like his tail is taped on or something?

More "Bad From The Past" drawings to come!

Drawing #2 and #3

So this Second drawing was done at Montana's restaurant in Langley.


They have table cloths that can be drawn on with crayons, and I decided to use this opportunity to draw my father as a train.

My Father

This one definitely falls under the "Bad Drawing" category, if just for the colossal fuck up of train anatomy.

For example, I have NO idea what's going on below the boiler... and where the bumpers are attached to. Drawing in crayon is no excuse (though it made it harder... really... no excuses but c'mon... dull crayon)

With a clear head, not clouded with my hunger for nachos and ribs, I redrew how my Train Father SHOULD have looked more like...


But then even this... jeez.

Kinda wonky perspective (I SUCK at perspective) and even though it's a sketch, some parts are really lazy... like I just expected random lines that I threw down would make sense somehow.

I think it's weird that everything is slightly leaning... MUST DRAW MORE STRAIGHT.

Okay well... that's 3 down.

Drawing #1

So this is something I just doodled at my desk while I was rendering...

It's a bear skull. I like bears.

Yeah so I doodled around it in ink, then passed it off to Arlyn who wanted to color it in.

What is my critique?

Well... I actually pictured the bear skull part of it a little more bad ass and skully... and I'm not sure what I was trying to do when I put all the fire-like stuff around it...

So I can't say it's "Bad" but it doesn't accomplish what I want since a doodle will always be a doodle. You can't say "That's a terrible doodle!" since a doodle is rarely planned, and therefore can't be done wrong...

And the coloring on Arlyn's part works for me... and she wants to keep it, so that's a success anyways...

but it IS a drawing, and since I can see in my head what a wicked artist could have done with this same piece, I will consider it as one of the "bad" ones... so 999,999 more to go!

So Much Potential...

Oh when I was young...

When I was a kid, I was always with a pencil in hand, wide eyed and inspired. I would draw anything and everything I saw.

People would look at my crappy - but not as crappy as the other kid's - drawings and say "wow did you draw that?!?" and I would reply "yes!"

My parents would put me in art class and I would enjoy the hell out of it. The highlights of my year would be going to an art store and getting supplies. I lived and breathed drawing.

I was super competitive as well. I HAD to be the best in my class, and often was.

But somewhere around the time I got out of high school and entered film school, I lost my desire to draw. Some of my class mates were AMAZING artists, and I felt I couldn't compete. I finished film school, got a job cleaning up animation (basically tracing) and then pretty much stopped drawing on my own altogether.

Now 13 years later I haven't grown passed being a high school art student.

But Maybe it's not too late!

You know super star artist Chuck Jones?



There's a Chuck Jones quote that goes something like "You've got a million bad drawings in you; you better get started"... I'm not sure that is the number he gave, and he may have been paraphrasing someone else, but I think the point comes across regardless.

So that is the goal of this site... to get out all the bad drawings.

Enjoy the coming years as I attempt to do my million bad drawings. Enjoy my self critiques (as I generally HATE everything I draw), and feel free to rip my shit apart yourselves! I can take it!

Let the crapfest begin!