Sketching While Gaming. Yay.
On Saturday I found myself sitting with my sweetie playing video games. More precisely, I was watching him play Final Fantasy XII, which I had bought two years ago but couldn’t get past the strangeness of the battle system so I never got too far with it. He, being a programmer, absolutely loves it, and I’m enjoying finally seeing the story play out!
It got me excited about the characters again. When I started my first attempt at the game I was really drawn towards Penelo’s character. I don’t know, there’s just something about her sincerity that really appeals to me. Her design is pretty neat too. Anyway, I was surprised to see myself pulling out my sketchbook and drawing her, since I really haven’t been drawing lately.
So I spent the rest of the evening drawing her, pulling up reference images on Erl (my laptop, what a godsend!), with sweetie occasionally glancing over and commenting on its progress.
Anyway, before I ramble anymore here’s the picture.
Okay, here’s the rest of the rambling.
It brought back a lot of wonderful memories and feelings of what it used to feel like to draw. A mixture of elation, frustration and productive focus, as well as being able to share it’s inception with someone else. My best friend used to come over when we were in highschool and play Final Fantasy games and I would sit behind her, watch, and draw. I was at my most prolific in those years, and I really enjoyed it, and doing so on Saturday really made me feel in that zone again. That’s something I haven’t felt for a long time.
I took a lot of notice of how I did things this time, because I’ve been having so much trouble with drawing that when it becomes easy I really want to remember why so I might be able to do it again, or more often. I started with a really rough and scribbly sketch of a pose, then I fleshed out the anatomy a teensy bit, then I started sketching in the shapes of the costume. It was when that was worked out that I went in and started cleaning it up, erasing the scribbles and fine tuning the lines and adding details to make it look cleaner. But of course some things, like her face and her hands, I had to erase and re-draw at least a dozen times before I could come up with something I liked. Ah well! Practice practice practice…
But I think what really made it so easy this time was simply that this wasn’t coming from my own head. Whenever I sit down to draw I freeze up, because nothing’s there. Then when I force myself to draw, even random things, it turns out looking like crap because I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s no planning, no forethought, because I simply don’t have any ideas.
But with this picture, all the ideas were taken care of for me. I just had to redraw it. Granted, redraw it in my own pose and from some really annoying references, but the main thing is that I didn’t have to sit there and make up anything. And it made it so much easier, having all that pressure taken off of me. I knew what I was going to draw, and someone had already done all the hard work for me. I was just doing the fun stuff, the drawing.
This amuses me, since a lot of what people find is the most satisfying and fun part of drawing is the creating, the throwing random thoughts and ideas onto the paper and creating something new and exciting that was nowhere else but your own brain up until then. I used to have that too, but it’s gone now, and forcing it doesn’t make it any better. For now, I’m glad that I can at least draw, even if I can’t create.
I’m sure the creativity will return with practice. Everyone says that it’s a muscle that just needs to be flexed. For now, maybe I’ll work more from reference, or do more character drawings from movies or games and see what comes of it. Well, it’s an idea anyway… maybe I should just have my sweetie over for more gaming. I bet that’s the secret!
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EDIT: Right, forgot about this:
I threw some quick colours on there to make the costume stand out a little more. I got the majority of my references from the website Creative Uncut and their Video Game Art Galleries which is an awesome resource for anyone who’s studying game or concept design, or who simply likes games and the art that makes them. There’s a lot of great stuff there.