Thursday 12 January 2017

Transience

My much-neglected website needs some new pictures added, particularly in the cartoons section. I'm afraid over the past year most of my energies have been diverted into producing pencil drawings to be posted on Instagram, which returns instant gratification in the form of "likes" from other users, but is unprofitable in the long term. I saw a TED Talk last night on YouTube which listed reasons for not being on social media, and one of the reasons given by the speaker was that users of social media lose their ability to apply themselves to tasks that take time but yield long-term benefits.

Portraiture

I have been temporarily sidelined into doing portrait work. My brother asked for a picture of himself for Christmas, and a work colleague has requested pictures of himself, his wife and his newborn child.
So far, so good. My brother laughed out loud at my picture of him, which was his head on Bruce Lee's body (he wanted to be portrayed in a martial arts pose). He seemed pleased with the picture but said he felt it could use a splash of red somewhere, which I agreed with. I have taken custody of the picture until I can figure out a way to add colour without potentially ruining it.
Adults are pretty straightforward to draw. Babies, on the other hand, have different proportions and are harder to get right. Ideally, if somebody asks you to draw their baby, you want to make it look adorable rather than creepy (if you want to be asked again).