Sketch 365 – by Scott Hulme

♫ “Who will buy this useless eraser?” ♪
♪ “Such a dis-appointment, you see!” ♫
♫ “Who will buy this useless eraser?” ♪
♪ “And get this thing away from me!” ♫

Seriously.  These things are terrible.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

So I dropped in again at the tail end of a figure drawing workshop.  I came in time to draw the last pose, a 25-minute one.  Unfortunately, on a kind of “off” day and without any warmup, it just really went badly.  I was doing it as a head drawing and it just wasn’t working.  So after battling it for quite a while, I finally gave up and used the last couple of minutes to do this instead.  This is nothing great, but the difference between it and the other is vast, believe me.  The other was so repellent I actually had to throw it away — breaking a rule I had kind of set for myself.

So far in this project, I’ve kept everything I’ve drawn, even if I didn’t like it and it didn’t end up as the post for that day.  I wanted to be able to go back and track progress using all my drawings.  But when I looked again later at the botched head drawing, I was sure I never wanted to see it again.  And now you too can be thankful that you’ll never be plagued with its horror!  (Now if only that were the case for the May 22 entry!)

[Comments and critique always welcome]

This is a follow-on from yesterday’s drawings.  I’m currently working on an idea to develop a series of kid-friendly characters around this and future Mars rovers.  So where yesterday’s sketches were basically a simplified version of the real thing, this is the next step — finding ways to integrate basic expressions and characteristics within/around the established structure.  We’ll see how this develops…

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Another few sketches for a project I’m working on.  This is the NASA’s next Mars rover, currently under construction at JPL.  Through a nationwide naming contest won by a Kansas sixth-grader, this rover has been dubbed “Curiosity.”  And with a head-mounted laser, it ought to make short work of any extraterrestrial felines.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

My aunt is passing through town this weekend, and brings with her more great photos from my grandmother in Australia.  The writing on the back of this photo says that my aunt, mother and grandfather are baling hay on the family farm — but I think it’s clear who’s doing most of the work…

[Comments and critique always welcome]

It looks like this lovelorn girl is sitting by herself at the edge of a river or something.  In reality, she’s a drawing model checking her phone during a break.  Mystique ruined!

Anyway, I quite like this drawing for some reason.  I think it’s because all too often I look back at my sketches at see one or two (or more) marks that I wish I could take back.  But these I’m all pretty happy with.  For a two- or three-minute charcoal sketch, I think it works pretty well.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Another soulless product illustration!  Sorry, I wasn’t feeling particularly creative tonight, so we’re left with another “nearest object” sketch.  But it’s all good practice.  Plus, even though it’s a dinky pocket-cam, it’s still a Canon.  So perhaps Ben and Sean can forgive my earlier indiscretion.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

A quick little charcoal illustration of my favorite person.  She too has started her own daily creative endeavor — driven by a beautiful concept that puts my little personal project to shame!  Read about its beginnings right over here.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

This is another sketch from a figure drawing workshop.  I’m not at all happy with it, but when you’re sketching on only about three hours of sleep, that’s what you end up with: famed martial arts master “Stumpy-Armed Yul Brynner.”

[Comments and critique always welcome]

This is another quick sketch from the storyboard collection I’ve been doing at work.  The idea here is that rock samples would get collected from Mars, and then be put in a little rocket and sent back to Earth.  So here, a recovery team converges on the re-entry capsule, which has touched down somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.

Of course, the real deal would probably be more involved than four dudes in a pickup truck — but I’ll let someone else figure out that part.  And the whole part where samples are collected.  And that bit with the automated rocket launch from the surface of a planet millions of miles away.  I’ll just stick with the pencil sketches.

[Comments and critique always welcome]