#kelley mcmorris
November 1st was International Self-Portrait Day, and this is the 3rd year I’ve participated, I think. I did this in about 2 hours on Halloween night - maybe that’s why it ended up with a slightly orange/black color scheme!
Honestly I’m not too happy with this, but oh well. Every year I sit down to do my self-portrait and I’m like “THIS time I’m going to do something AWESOME” but it never turns out that way.
I’m starting to think that the surest way to sabotage personal work is to tell yourself “this time I’m going to do something awesome.”
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Happy halloween! Here’s a piece i did back in 2012 called “Deeper Understanding.” People tell me it’s creepy.
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If you want to be a freelance illustrator, you need to learn to work fast - not only in order to meet your deadlines, but also so that you can take on enough jobs to make a living.
Judging from conversations I’ve had with other illustrators, I get the sense that I work abnormally quickly - at least for a book illustrator. During busy seasons I may have to complete more than a dozen illustrations in a month. Back when I was working on Bible scenes, I had about two days to complete each one! After working at this pace for the past few years, I’ve developed some of my own techniques for drawing quickly and I thought I’d share them with you.
I’m not going to talk about premade brushes, photobashing, speed painting or other Photoshop shortcuts. This is a list of tips that can apply to all artists, no matter their industry or medium. Best of all, these are techniques that will improve the overall quality of your artwork, rather than making it look sloppy or rushed.
Here are my tips on learning to drawquickly without sacrificing quality.
- Use more photo references. If you’re stuck drawing something over and over again because it doesn’t look right, most likely you’re not looking at photo references. Take the reference photos that you need, and 90% of the time this solves the problem. Don’t spend an hour trying to draw a good hand from your imagination. Get up, take a reference photo, draw the hand, move on!
- Leave details for last. If you render too early, you’re more likely to waste time on something that later needs to be changed in order to fit the rest of the drawing. Make sure that you’ve completed the entire rough sketch and figured out all the tricky parts BEFORE getting caught up in rendering the highlights on your character’s eyeballs.
- Practice short figure drawing poses. Go to a live figure drawing session, or try drawing people or animals in public, for example while riding the bus or subway. Use an online figure drawing generator and set the timer to 1 or 2 minutes. Try doing this for 15 minutes every day. This will teach you to work quickly, establish major shapes and not get caught up in rendering details.
- For complex buildings, objects or environments, use a 3D modeling program such as Blender or Google Sketchup. Sometimes clients have asked me to draw tricky things like a Victorian mansion with a wraparound porch or the Temple of Jerusalem. If I tried to draw those things from imagination, I would have spent hours going slowly insane. Instead I downloaded some 3D models, posed them in the correct perspective, traced over the major shapes, then added my own details and colors. To be clear, I’m not saying to slap photos or 3D models directly into your drawings. I’m saying to use them as basic perspective guides to draw on top of. (Here’s some examples from myself,Howard LyonandWylie Beckert.) Although it takes a while to learn how to use a 3d modeling program, it will save you so much time and frustration down the line.
- Practice working under deadlines. When you’re drawing for yourself, it’s easy to get into the habit of taking your sweet time. You ponder, tweak, fiddle and change directions. While it’s important to relax and enjoy your art, if you want to learn to draw faster, you need to light a fire under your butt! Give yourself an assignment with a less-than-comfortable deadline, or participate in a collaborative project like a zine or a group gallery show. Deadlines will force you to commit to artistic decisions and make them work. Think of it as a way to practice decisiveness.
Now get cracking, artists!
(If you liked this post, there are more like it at my blog!)
I just found this drawing of mine from 2011 titled “My Ideal Life” and it’s still accurate.
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Another piece from my art school thesis . My teenaged cousin and her friend were kind enough to model for me.
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I did this illustration back in art skewl (four years ago!) but I thought I’d share it here for #mermay.
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If you want to know the #1 thing you could do to get the most out of your time at art school, here’s my advice:
Observe your classmates, and make friends with the artists who are going places. Here’s how to identify them: they submit more homework than the teacher requires. They draw in their free time. They talk about studios, publishers, working artists, awards, industry publications. They spend their money on conventions, ateliers and workshops. They get excited about printing processes, business cards and paper types.
Those students are going to land studio jobs, book deals, agents and gallery shows. Make friends with them, and as much as possible, stay in touch after you graduate. Not only are they going to be valuable professional contacts, but they will also lend you the emotional and creative energy to get through the post-graduation slump. They’ll invite you to join projects, meet up with you at events, introduce you to opportunities, cheer you on social media, give you advice on your portfolio and critiques on your newest pieces. They will encourage you to keep going.
These friendships are one of the most valuable benefits art school has to offer. Don’t squander this opportunity.
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The boy who could bring origami to life.
Read about the process behind this illustration at my blog!
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A sneak peek at a portfolio piece I’ve been working on for quite a while now. It’s been giving me a challenge.
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GIVEAWAY!!! Reblog this post to enter to win this set of 8 illustrated postcards. Giveaway ends at 11:59 PM PST 2/19. Winner randomly chosen.
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For Valentine’s Day: a love letter to artists.
You are doing a brave thing.
You could have gotten a “normal” job with a steady paycheck. The reliable and safe career your parents wanted you to pursue. You could have defaulted to the cultural norm of talking about how much you hate Mondays and “live for the weekend.” Jokes about the “rat race” and how your boss is such an idiot. In the words of Timothy Ferris, you could have settled for “a tolerable and comfortable existence doing something unfulfilling.”
But you wanted more than that. Whether you’re a freelancer, employed at a studio, studying at art school or working a day job while building up your portfolio, you’ve chosen to do the hard thing, the scary thing.
You’ve chosen to jump into a career that is unpredictable and uncharted, a job that’s full of rejection and criticism, a field that’s highly competitive and notoriously low-paying, work that our culture considers “not a real job.” You’re choosing to brave all of that because you can see better things on the other side. You want to create something that you’re proud of. You have skills that few other people have and you’re taking a chance that many people are too afraid to take.
So, artist friends: stop beating yourselves up. Stop criticizing yourselves for not producing more, not being more successful, not having a clear direction for your career, not getting more online attention, not networking more, not studying more, not blogging more, not having this whole thing figured out already. Stop tearing yourselves apart for every little mistake and perceived shortcoming.
Treat yourself with kindness. You are doing a brave thing.
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I designed and illustrated this cover for THE WISHNER’S CURSE, by author Camille S. Campbell. This was super fun to do because *~*SPARKLES*~*! You can read about the process and see WIPs at my blog.
THE WISHNER’S CURSE is now available on Amazon .
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✨ Preorders open for SPIRIT: A Studio Ghibli Art Book! ✨
Spirit is an unofficial charity fanzine, dedicated to the many stunning and unique films created by Studio Ghibli! With 70+ pages of amazing content, our bundles will also include a variety of merch and even a Major Arcana deck! Preorders will close June 10th!
Info:artist list|6 x 9 | 70+ pages | perfect bound | charities
PREORDER NOW!reblogs appreciated !
I have an illustration in this zine! Here’s a preview!
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I was thrilled to illustrate the cover for RISE OF THE DRAGON MOON, by Gabrielle Byrne and published by MacMillan, 8/2019. Thanks to Ellen Duda for the job!
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WHAT TO DRAW WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DRAW
- Draw from life. This is the best way to learn to draw. Drawing from life teaches your mind to translate 3D objects in your vision to 2D shapes on paper. Learning to think in 3D will give your drawings a visible confidence and consistency. Draw people at the cafe, on the subway, in church. Draw your pets while they’re sleeping, draw your own feet, visit a zoo and draw the animals, set up a still life on a table and draw that. It doesn’t really matter what you draw; as long as you’re drawing from life, then you’re exercising that 3D-to-2D muscle in your mind.
- Draw from photos. Drawing from photos doesn’t help you practice thinking in 3D, because you’re translating a shape from one 2D surface (the photo) to another (your sketchbook). However, photos can introduce you to shapes that would be difficult to find in real life - cool stuff like castles, tigers, planets. Sketch any photo that interests you - and it is totally ok to trace things just for practice.
- Draw from your imagination. This is where you develop your personal voice. When you draw from imagination, you’re not just copying what you see, but remembering things you’ve seen before and interpreting them in your own way. Keep this fun and light; don’t try any complex crowd scenes or else you’ll get frustrated. The more you draw from life and from photos, the more material your imagination will have to work with, and the easier it will get. All three practices feed into each other.
(If you liked this post, I have more advice and tips for aspiring artists at my blog!)
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I re-opened my Etsy shop so you can buy prints and stationary directly from me!
I only have a few prints available, so if there’s a painting you’d like that’s not available in my Etsy store, I have more in my INPRNT shop.
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Oh hey guys! The newest Ranger in Time comes out tomorrow! I wrote a blog post where you can read about the process of illustrating the cover. Check it out!
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