Wonderful World of Wings

First, apologies for lack of update on Monday. I had some sort of alcohol related thing going on... deadlines seem to disappear in those instances.

Onto today's blog:

I've been giving myself little goals to work towards and the past week it's been Feathered Wings. I can draw bat/mammal wings pretty good as I was always rather obsessed with Dragons, but feathered wings, not so much.

My dragon wings:

That was like a 2 minute photoshop sketch. If I was doing it really detailed i'd have knuckles on the wing 'fingers'. I've always drawn these kind of wings but recently I've been needing to draw feathered wings for some characters in a story I've been writing with my other half.

Feathered wings on the other hand...

Kind of sucky!

So I embarked on a mission to turn my feathered wings into something worth showing. I've posted a picture up here recently with wings on it, but she's not very good either, it was her pose I was looking at practicing. I began looking online for wing anatomy and started to realise where I was going wrong. I was thinking that the wing was much shorter than it really is when actually it's just an arm with no fingers.

So I started to practice and research and came up with this!

I dunno if it makes sense to other people but it made sense to me lol!

So yes, with my newfound wing anatomy, I drew this (And I am very proud of it)

So yeah, let me know if it makes sense lol.

Website: Pose Maniacs.

I had today off work, that makes me very happy.

I've not done anything with my cat comic over the weekend. I have a very short attention span for long running projects. I promise I will post something of Areia kitty at some point. I have been drawing over the weekend though, I have been practicing with different poses, all my characters are usually standing up, rarely sitting or anything because my understanding of anatomy isn't stellar.

I have however found an absolutely fantastic resource for interesting and varied poses.


Pose Maniacs is a resource for artists that's free to use. Each of the models you can see in 360 degrees or you can look at the moving images of people running. The models are all done showing underlying muscle tissue and it really gives you a good idea of what you're looking at when you look at a person.

This:

Is a picture I did using some of the resources of this site. I really like this picture, I'm rather proud of it. I think you should seriously go check it out.

Artistic Progression

I've been reading a lot of webcomics and fanfiction since I was 15. I started writing Harry Potter fanfiction and thats where I met my other half, through writing so it always makes me smile still when I do it. I don't really write very much except when participating in the NANOWRIMO, but I still enjoy it.

I've wanted to get into drawing more in the past 5 - 6 years and I got photoshop recently and a Wacom Bamboo tablet. It's gorgeous, I love it and I love drawing. I used to use Serif to draw, a free version and a cheap Trust Tablet. I thought they were great and they did me for what I was trying to achieve a few years ago.

I started drawing semi seriously in 2007 and of my first pictures I drew my favorite is of Arvahnna;

The background is pants bit I liked her staff and the wings and the general feeling of the drawing. Since then I think I've gotten much better. Part of me wants to redo this piece, another says to leave it be. I also sometimes think I should take down my older stuff but I still like my old drawings and I like to see the progression between Arvahnna and one like Senaleah.

I like her much better, it's no where near as pixelly and it's more detailed. Knowing I was only using this as a character profile page I didn't do a big fancy background. I'm not gonna use either these girls for my comic, these girls are in another story that me and the other half write for kicks.

For my comic, I want to go down a much more cartoony/sketchy route otherwise i'd be there all day drawing one person never mind a whole comic page. I have another idea as well for a silly comic that I might end up posting here.

I'm thinking this will be my cast of characters. The eye up top is how most of my random sketches start, pay it no heed, I just like drawing eyes. I want this here for a first drawing to see how my art progresses for the comic as I don't want to post it on Deviant Art.

I think this week I'll continue on an art theme!