My first drawing on FA. YAY! I'd really appreciate some feedback because this turned out better than I expected in a few ways and I'm inspired to try to do even better! Please comment! :D Also, read what I thought I did okay and not okay if you would. I'd like to know if I'm way off base.

Poor bear. He's all alone and no one understands him, so he's sad. He wanted to feel better, so he tried to think of a way and remembered that ice cream makes everyone happy. But he ate so much that he got sick, so he's even more unhappy! And just to make it all worse... now there's no more ice cream. TRAGEDY!!!! And he's got no cable or satellite for his TV either, so all he can watch with the digital switchover is the low power stations, running crappy ripoffs of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. :(

I checked out a LOT of other bear pics, including some real photos (even one of some chubby human dude), drawing inspiration from a few to just to get the details anywhere close. Losic, Tolstoy, polarpanda, dudeIMaBear, raccoondrew, and probably several others I have neglected to think of; thankee for drawrin' bearz, especially those of ya who made 'em blubbery! W/O your pics I wouldn't have gotten inspired or had the means to make that face!

I had the itch to draw. Very badly, in fact. Worst in years! I wanted to draw a fatty bear, a sad looking one because I've been sad lately. So, I dug out what materials I could find (No. 2 pencil from grade school and printer paper from college) and got to work. The first thing I've seriously drawn in years, and the first character I've drawn other than scribbles since the early nineties, mostly because I'm a terrible artist, with no training and little skills. But this turned out. O.o Miracles sometimes happen, I guess!

And now I analyze my work, just because I like to torture myself. ;)
I was honestly not enthused to see how it would turn out. Things don't go well when I draw characters. I did this all with judicious use of a ruler and without doing the whole shapes-making-up-the-body method. I guess you'd call it freehand? I started with the right foot just to get a point to work from and moved across, doing the nauseated bruin from the bottom up because I've always struggled with hands, feet, and faces. I figured that if I didn't botch the feet too badly I could move on at least enough to finish the body... I did, so I attempted the face, and this time it worked! Kinda. :) Threw in some crappy objects to support the story of sad bear eating his way through the freezer in search of comfort. You know, because I love stories and I have to make them even for a crappy lil sketch.

Here's what I like about it:
- The face! Not exactly how I intended it to turn out in the beginning. The eyes are just what I wanted, and I'm satisfied with the muzzle. I think I went a little overboard with the lines, though. He looks like he's gonna have worry creases. They made me decide he felt sick to his stomach, though, which gave me more ideas, like putting the one hand on the belly and having the tongue stuck out. All in all, not total fail like all the other times. :D
- The belly! Turned out better than I thought it would. I especially like the belly button, even though he probably shouldn't have one. I thought to add nipples too, but decided against it. He's furry! They're hidden and forbidden except with female boobies!
- The furriness! I did a tight zigzag over the basic lines of the body to make it look like he's fuzzy. Don't know if you can see that in the pic or not, but it's there. I kinda like it. What do you think?
- The moobs! Not because they're good (since they're not). Because who doesn't like 'em? MOOBIES!!!!!!

Here's what I don't like:
- The feet and hands! I suck at them. Period. Kinda wishing now that I'd gone with either 3 or 5 toes, and maybe 5 fingers on the hands. But, all the same, they still aren't very good. Feet should be bigger, partly just because they should be, but also because of perspective, even though his legs are supposed to be short and stumpy. And his feet ought not be floating in the air! But, I wanted to show his fatty leg and a tiny tiny bit of his rump (that lil triangular pieces by the belly overhang). And I wish a little that I hadn't colored in the claws, or even left the claws out at least on the hands. But, it would have looked wrong with them missing. So, eh...
- The shoulders! I wanted to do more angular, but at the same time rounded because he's a tubby! It just wasn't working either way. I took the middle road.
- The random objects! I was getting tired, didn't want to spend another whole day working on the scenery for some not-spectacular lineart. They're sloppy, but serviceable. Tried to put melted ice cream on some, and some claw marks on one box, but I don't think they worked out very well.
- The smears and smudges! AUGH!! I had to erase a LOT, and I tend to smear things on the right with my drawing hand since I don't draw left to right, instead moving around randomly, filling in where I feel I should move next. Sweaty hands and careless pressing on the page... Plus, I guess I just tend to get a lot of junk on the paper because it takes me forever to finish a drawing! I cheated and removed a lot of the junk with Photoshop, just so it didn't look like I'd tried to shade and done a crappy job. Had to lower the brightness and increase the contrast to get all the lines in, and even then some were faint, which made the smudges even worse! Anyone have any advice on that, other than drawing heavier lines? Since I was importing the image anyway, I thought I'd clean up that mess. Other than that, and putting in the text for the TV program, this thing is untouched digitally. Which is kind of like saying, "I only fixed the broken parts." But, oh well. :)
- The face! "Say what? I thought you liked the face!" you exclaim. Well, I do. But, it makes me realize how much work I need to do on muzzles. Can't always do a full frontal or 90% frontal view of the face. And I don't care too much for the... eh... whisker stubble? Is there a word for those dots? I wanted it, but I think I overdid it, or it was too symmetrical. Or asymmetrical. I know, I'm contradicting myself. But it feels like both to me.
- The big blank white space! I should have tried a background, but I was mentally and emotionally exhausted and my hand was cramping by the time I got done. Tiny details are painful! I considered putting some slobbiness with ice cream mess on him to fill in some space, but decided not to because, again, I was tired, and I thought I was pushing my luck just to finish the poor bear. Plus, in black and white it would have looked weird. Maybe another time. Either way, I need to learn to use the whole page better (image is cropped, so you might not notice, but I do in the original). It seems that I make better creations when I draw them big instead of working in a tiny part of the corner. Is it true for you as well, or am I just that pathetically untalented?
- Overall techniques! Man, I need to get better at perspective. And anatomy. And use of space. And learn some way to do fur better. I'd like to get more tufts, even though I was satisfied with the fuzzy scribble method.

Whew. I said a lot. But, that's me. Bla bla bla. Not that anyone read this, but I hope you weren't too bored. If you agree or disagree with something I said or had some advice, feel free to speak up. As long as you're not vicious, I'd love to hear what you've got to say! And even vicious might be nice in its own way...
Probably won't do another one of these for a long time, but either way. Later!