Daily Drawing Challenge 020

Well... this is the last of the Daily Drawing Challenges that I did. This was a lot of fun when I drew them several years ago, and just as much fun to color them over the last couple of months.

I like doing art challenges. Hopefully, I can keep the CG Character Challenge going, as well as start up a new one here and there. I should really get my family's art blog started up again. That was a lot of fun.

Speaking of family, it's my Dad's birthday today. I'd like to wish him a very happy birthday today, but I don't think he knows about this blog. So, it looks like I'm going to have to give him a call.

Daily Drawing Challenge 019

This one was a lot of fun to draw and color.

One of the first things I ever built in 3D was a haunted tree, that I built in Ray Dream Designer. One day in the near future (hopefully), I plan on rebuilding another haunted tree in 3D (now with almost 13 years of experience under my belt) and posting along side my original rendering. Hopefully, it will be an improvement.

Daily Drawing Challenge 018

I'm not sure if this monkey is more crazy for driving sideways, or for not using his hands to drive. Either way, I think it's crazy to even let a monkey drive. What was I thinking?

Daily Drawing Challenge 017

This is another one of my favorites from the challenge. I also have it in my demo reel - although, I re-colored it, tonight.

When I was coloring it again, I was going to paint in fur, but I thought that it would take away from the 'softness' that I thought this baby monster should have. All-in-all, I'm happier with the way this turned out, than the first time I colored it.

When I originally drew this, I used a lot of inspiration from my son, who was a baby at the time. I think that's another reason why I like this so much.

Daily Drawing Challenge 016

I'm not too proud of this one. I hurried this one really fast, and it shows. I was hoping that when I colored it tonight, it would make it better, but I don't think it did the trick.

Daily Drawing Challenge 015

For some reason, I forgot to add a hard hat to him. On every other one of my challenges that involved a construction worker, I've had a hard hat with a happy sunny face on it. I must've been in a hurry when I did this one.

Daily Drawing Challenge 014

The lunch hour that I drew this, Mike and I just sat there for most of the time saying, "I can't figure out what to draw for this one!".

When I finally drew this, there wasn't much time, so I just flew threw it. Fortunately, I think the coloring job that I did on it today covers up a lot of the lack of effort on the drawing side.

Daily Drawing Challenge 013

My apologies for missing yesterday... which I believe would go out to the 3 people who actually watch this blog. :) The reason that I missed posting yesterday was because I tried to help my wife catch up with some yard work. I'd like to be able to say that the yard work took up most of the day, and I wasn't able to work on my art, but I can't. Unfortunately, it's been awhile since I did some serious yard work, and the years of sitting in front of a computer reminded my body that I'm a soft, weak, dough boy, who has no business trying to impress my wife with how much work I think I can do. Needless to say, my arms felt like rubber and hurt too bad to do any art.

Which leads me to today's image. This challenge was really fun for me in several ways. First, this character is the mascot for my side business. For the last several years, I have been building him a little bit at a time in 3D. I've got all the modeling and UV work done, but there are some things I want to get and learn before I finish up texturing and rigging. I know how to do both, but there are some cool new tools that I want to get familiar with before I tackle it.

The second reason that this was so much fun is because this image symbolizes me. For those of you who know me, pretty much always see me with a hat on. My favorite color is blue, my last name is Bird, and I am a total computer nerd. I wouldn't say that I'm generally angry, but when I'm having computer or software troubles, I can definitely blow my top.

This image is also in one of my demo reels, but it wasn't colored until tonight. I can't wait to put it in my new demo reel, with some cool effects I want to try out.

Daily Drawing Challenge 012

Although I had a bit of a difficult time figuring out the color scheme that I wanted to go with, I liked working on this one. It was fun playing with the colors and I think they add to the reason why this guy is a bit confused. :)

In other news, I got to go to all-you-can-eat sushi tonight with Adam (my brother), Bear (my brother-in-law), and a couple of my brother's brothers-in-law. It was a night of brotherhood.

Daily Drawing Challenge 011

I'm not sure if this cow looks crazy, posessed, or if he's about to explode.

Either way, I actually have a lot of respect for many of the guys and gals that put on their badges and do what they can to make sure we're safe - even if it means risking their own safety. My hat goes off to all the valiant and honest officers - especially the one who didn't give me a ticket because I accidentally ran a stop sign.

Daily Drawing Challenge 010

I don't know how I feel about this one. I think I may have tried too hard with the patriotic colors. I also didn't really use any reference for this, so I did a lot of guessing and making up stuff. I'm not really sure if this is a 'quick read' of an astronaut.

Oh, well. On to the next one.

Daily Drawing Challenge 009

This one took me a long time to color. Usually I can get these Daily Drawing Challenges colored in about an hour, before I post them. This one took about 2 1/2 hours, but I had fun coloring it, and I like how it turned out.

Daily Drawing Challenge 008

This was one of my favorites. In addition to liking the way that it turned out, it also reminds me of my daughter, Lexie. At the time that I drew this, her hair was very similar, and she is quite the ham, so I wouldn't put it past her to make a face like this if she was pretending to throw up.

I also put this in my demo reel - though I did a bit of touch-up tonight.

Daily Drawing Challenge 007

For those of you who have seen our Bird Family Art blog, you should recognize this. I posted it there a long time ago. While this was originally done for the Daily Drawing Challenge, I posted it on our family blog as an example for some art challenges that we were doing.

The only difference is that now it's shaded, instead of having just flat colors.

Daily Drawing Challenge 006

I don't know why plumbers get the bad rep for always showing a little crack. In the years that I've lived at my house, we've had several plumbers come to fix various things, and none of them have had this problem. On the other hand, I know that my wife has had to tell me to hike up my pants on several occasions... and I've done very little plumbing work.

Daily Drawing Challenge 005

Now that I don't have any more Low Poly Challenge images, I'm going to jump back to my Daily Drawing Challenge images.

Work is also starting to slow down, so hopefully, I'll be able to get the CG Character Challenge up and running again.

Daily Drawing Challenge 004

Ok... this has got to be the WORST car I've ever drawn! When I drew this, I had a bunch of stuff I needed to get done, so my lunch hour was more like a half hour. I had to just pound it out, and it really shows.

I was a bit hesitant to post it, but I feel like I shouldn't skip over a challenge, because it's bad. After all, the point of the challenge was to see what we could get done in the time we had - even though the coloring was done tonight.

Daily Drawing Challenge 003

Although, I love creating characters and working on art for a living, I have to admit that sometimes working with computers makes me feel like this guy.

Daily Drawing Challenge 002

Man... it's getting harder and harder to post something every day. I'm super swamped with a freelance job I'm on, and it doesn't afford me a lot of time to do other things.

At any rate, here is the second of my Daily Drawing Challenges. The drawing was done during a lunch hour, and I did all the coloring tonight. I know it's dark, but that's the way I likes it.

Daily Drawing Challenge 001

Several years ago, my friend Mike Snyder and I came up with some art challenges to help us fight off an excruciating boredom we were suffering through, during some long and tedious crunch hours. We had a Low Poly Challenge that we did every week. We also had a Daily Drawing Challenge that we would do every day, during our lunch hour.

Both challenges consisted of drawing out slips of paper from 3 bowls. The first bowl had emotions, the second bowl had occupations, and the third bowl had character types. At the beginning of each challenge (whether it was daily or weekly), we would draw a slip of paper from each bowl, and that was the character we had to create.

Similarly, the CG Character Challenge that I started and am participating in now, works the same way.

This image was our first Daily Drawing Challenge - Angry King Insect. In the hour that I worked on it, I just did the pencil and ink. Tonight, I colored it. We ended up doing a bunch of these, so I think I'll start coloring and posting them.