New Start, New Art

So today I decided to start an art blog, because why not? It's interterm (the month between winter break and Spring semester) so I only have one class for two more weeks, which means I have way too much time on my hands. More importantly, I want to challenge myself to write about art--both mine and those of the artists that inspire me. I want to talk about my sketches and the people, places, and experiences that I try to capture with ink and paper. Also I just really want to get back to writing coherent sentences again, because I realized all I've been writing on my current (Tumblr) blog are "what even" or "i just can't" or "OMG I DIE. TOO MUCH CUTE" under photos of cute kittens and hedgehogs.

Since this is my first blog post, I guess I'll talk about my first project of the year (which I technically started in December, but whatever). A few days after winter break started, I challenged myself to draw at least one thing every day until Spring semester starts at the end of January. I had 45 days before that time, so  in my head I thought, 'This is the most fantastic challenge ever! By the end of January I'll have 45 wonderful little sketches that I can use for my portfolio!'. But reality set in and by the 20th day, I failed the challenge. (In my defense though, I did almost five sketches each day, just saying). I'm still getting over my embarrassing defeat and while I'm at it, I might as well share some of my favorite sketches from the challenge.

This one was one of my first sketches. It's of my grandpa, done while we were waiting for our order at a small Filipino diner.

The next three were all done on the same day--the day I went with my grandparents to a casino and waited at the food court as they played for a solid four hours. There were a lot of interesting folks there, so the wait wasn't actually all that bad

This one was my first digital sketch during the challenge. I was reading Rad Sechrist's how-to blog when I saw an assignment that seemed like fun. The goal was to draw simple and random shapes and then draw characters within those shapes. It was so much fun and it made me realize how important it is to have clear silhouettes especially in character design.

The next two are from my "giraffe days" during which I was so obsessed with giraffes that I started writing a story about a little girl and her adventures with her giraffe best friend. Fun times. Haha.

 Lastly, I experimented with simple (and very rough) animation in Photoshop. And I also learned how to make GIFs (I'm one of the cool kids now! Woohoo!).

I guess that's it for today! I'm hoping to make some friends here and I'm definitely ready to get inspired by amazing artists and writers!