When you draw, how often do you go out of your comfort zone? I mean really focused on trying things that you're not that good at or flat out suck at?

It's fun to simply draw what you know because you have a reasonable degree of certainty of how it will turn out, but trying something new brings up a whole lot of concerns, like will I be able to draw it competently and recognizably or will it be a mush of bad technique, amateur hour and flat out butchering of all things tasteful?

Of course, letting that fear get to you only hinders your progress as an artist and is what separates a real artist from someone who likes drawing one creature/person in similar poses with little to no background. I know you all have seen a lot of that here. Hell, a decent portion of my gallery was dedicated to that back in the day. haha

I've been working on the hard stuff for a while now. Though I haven't been submitting much, I've been drawing a LOT over the past 6-8 months. I've done 23 1/4 pages of a Veronica Mars unofficial movie script that's been floating around and then I moved on to another script which I am currently on page 26 of. As far as professional output goes, I'm insanely slow as it's taking me a couple of days just to pencil a single page, though I am only putting in an hour or two a night, usually.

Anyway, I have been trying a lot of new things over the last many months.

I have been working on on emotions, like a hearty smile with this image:

 

Or fear and surprise this:



Contorting the face to not only give a real emotional feeling while still making the character resemble how he/she should is always difficult.

Even more difficult are backgrounds. This script is going to really start kicking my butt when it comes to backgrounds as there will be a lot of outside New York City shots I will have to do. I am also trying to find a way to show that an environment is completely frozen using only black and white which has been difficult. Thank you for the people who have replied to an older journal about how I should go about this, the comments were helpful.

I've decided that the initial freeze shot will be splattery with speed lines surrounding her, then the panel gutters turn to black. After 2 or 3 times really hammering home that the world freezes when those things happen, it should be enough to teach the reader what that is so future time stops will be easier to jump to and easy for the reader to comprehend.

Below are a couple more drawings. First is a bit of frozen curiousity:



And this second is 2 pages. The top left set of panels showcase each of the people she saw frozen in time going about their day just as time moves. She then collapses, grabs her watch (which controls time, of course) and freezes time again. She relaxes, gets a hold of herself, then hears a laugh in the distance as she laughs, while time is frozen. Curious, she wanders out of Central Park and down the streets.



Those are the most recent pages. She then wanders into Rockefeller Center with frozen people skiing. It's also Christmas time, so the Christmas tree is up and it's all decorated. Talk about an intimidating set of pages to try and draw. O_O

So yeah, talk about being out of my comfort zone. Big city, lots of guys in this comic, major expressions with screaming and laughing and evil death eyes. If I ever get through it, I will hopefully be a lot more comfortable with trying to draw everything.

Anyway, that's about it. I am drawing. I am keeping busy. I don't know if or when I'll end up inking these and adding them to dA, however. With 26 pages pencilled, I should really start some inking.