An Eble a day keeps the doctor away

I’m going to extend my little art thievery project. I’m going to timebox it too, let’s try a week. I started yesterday, a Tuesd’y, so we’ll go ‘til Mundy. After that, we’ll see what felt good and perhaps find someone else to mimic/mutilate. For now: Seven days, seven attempts.

Here is attempt #2.

This one differs from the first in that I didn’t have any reference material in front of me as I did it. I think it is less balanced than yesterdays but I enjoyed feeling freer to experiment with different shapes and combinations, as well as broken lines.

The big swoop is similar to yesterday’s, but I chose not fill this one, gave the fill to a smaller, less assured swoop just below.

The pen I’m using (just a cheap office ball point) feathers¹ a bit and doesn’t dry well so I smudged it a few times. Most of the smudges I covered up with more in-filled bits but there are a couple spots where it’s still a bit messy.

I’m wary of any premature optimisation but I may look into buying some better quality paper and a good pen or two.

When looking at art, I’m trying to look closer, tease out component parts of a thing rather than just looking at the whole. Trying that with a drawing of my own is challenging because it’s hard to credit the artist (myself) with any artistic depth when I know he doesn’t have any (yet). But the attempt did yield one thing: there are parts of this drawing that, to me, are better than the drawing manages to be as a whole, sub drawings that could stand alone.

The bottom left is, I think, the strongest part of the image. Interesting, because it didn’t feel right as I was drawing it, probably because I was looking at the whole. Compared to the rest of the drawing, it has a much higher concentration of curves and of short lines.