see, i don’t really know when to quit

having dropped the 365 i appear to have talked myself into a new self-imposed regime: a sketch every sunday (posted, rather than necessarily drawn, on sunday). i’m resurrecting my diy art school after spending an inordinate amount of time mooching around mithi’s blog over the last week. you prolly all saw her embroidery hoops on whipup, did you delve any deeper?

it’s rekindled my urge to ponce about retrain at art school. there’s a course local to me that looks like the perfect fit, but that wouldn’t be possible until G is at school, so a few years away still. in the mean time i’d like to broaden my basic knowledge and skills foundation-course-stylee, and mithi’s blog will be a great help since she posts many of her assignments in detail, so i can try my hand at a few.

i’ve got my own copy of drawing on the right side of the brain and i’ll be working through that, but in the mean time i thought i’d warm up with some random sketching. this is the second version of this picture. the first was my usual style and took half an hour or more. i wanted to see if i could do a proper 5 minute sketch rather than a drawing. it’s okay, and i think the shapes are actually more accurate, though maybe that’s because i’d spent so long looking at it drawing the first one.

i prefer the stylistic distinction between blanket and horse in the first version – the horse with more detail, more lifelike shading, and the blanket more sketchy, but this one’s more lively which is what i’m looking to develop in my drawings, i think i naturally tend towards overworking which can make them flat.