Flowergirl

A friend told me that all my entries in this blog thus far seem to have some sort of negative disclaimer. I'm just a perfectionist, I guess, or a hyper-critical pessimistic at least. But I don't have much to say about this pre-sketch so far....well, okay, her eyes are a bit Shannen Doherty-lopsided, but nothing I can't fix. But I actually like how the face turned out, considering it took all of five minutes to form. One thing that I do like about my drawings now that I'm older is that my women's faces look a bit more like real people, and not as stylized as comic book characters. And when I try to do pretty they always look pretty to me. I guess it just came with maturity, but I now know where to put lines to delineate features as minimally as possible.

The interesting thing is that while I may have an image in mind, what comes out on the canvas is always the result of trying to capture the image in your head but reacting to whatever lines you put down. I'm always putting another line down based on a previous one, hence the initial sketchiness of my drawings. If I'm drawing in pen the lines never leave, but at least with pencils or the digital medium, I can keep reworking the image until I'm satisfied, although it may not necessarily be the image I had in my head. It's almost like my hands collaborate with my mind. This image I imagined while reading Domino magazine while on a cardio machine, and I saw a framed black and white drawing of some flowers. I immediately saw a dark, rich, goth-looking woman's face surrounded by perfectly detailed, pencil-shaded blooms. The woman in my head wasn't as sweet looking as this girl, although depending on how much makeup I apply to her, that could still change. We'll see. I'll see if I actually want to finish it up...