All right, so after a week of pondering (and procrastinating), after my failure of drawing out Lilly, I had a thought... When I started out my “New Year’s resolution” of pencil drawing, I tried it the “hard way,” namely by drawing with as little references as possible. Although it’s generally agreed upon that using references isn’t necessarily cheating, I wanted to try and push myself a little bit. But...call it partially waving the white flag, I think I’m going to lower my game a little. So, I took a different tactic, namly going to Blender, and rendering out Lilly, and use her as her own reference for drawing.

Granted this isn’t technically new for me, I did something similar months ago, rendering out stuff as references. Technically I didn’t stop, I just...didn’t have as much inspiration as I thought. But what’s new here is that I’m drawing traditionally rather than digitally, which is a new experience. It’s a little more difficult for me, but this maybe for the best, since I’m taking a more “proper” approach, since I’m not merely tracing out.

I drew out some thumbnail(-esque) sketches, mostly as a kinda-sorta warm up, even though that’s probably a no-no thing to do with thumbnail sketches. As I got used to Lilly’s pose, I was trying to focus on creating shapes of her, as opposed to making her be one organic shape. It was surprisingly tough. In fact I think I was getting worse as I went along...

But I also took the opportunity to “improve” Lilly, namely adding or changing details, which would be better and easier to do in a drawing rather than in Blender. In this case, making her a little more dragon-like, as well as some canine-like features. Not overly perfect, but that’s to be expected. At least it’s better than my previous attempt to draw her…(knock on wood)

My general plan is that renders will be a reference to the models, and likewise the drawings will be references to the models. But for that reason, I can’t help but feel, in the back of my mind, that I really am cheating myself. As mentioned before, it’s not considered cheating to use references, but I this feels like a bad chicken-or-the-egg paradox, which was way I tried to stray away from references as reasonably as possible. It’s not enough to stop me, but it isn’t a positive feeling nagging me...

It was also nice to play with Blender again, and render out something, it’s been months since I’ve made such a render. It was almost like visiting an old friend.

EDIT: All right, after a moment to think mull over my bad redo, I did a re-redo of Lilly. And this time I took a more methodical attempt at drawing her as shapes. I also tried a newer way to draw her torso/waist, and opted not to draw out a “skeleton”, just the shape itself.

MUCH, much better. It was a frustrating at first, even a little nerve-wracking, my hands were shaking a little, and I made and erased maybe four circles that I start off as the head. But, it was well worth it.

Still, I wasn’t brave enough to detail the hands or feet. I didn’t even bother with the bathing suit. But eh, Lilly prefers to be cloth-less anyway. :3

Sketches + Renders (Clothed & Nude)
https://sta.sh/2ojfhcdo703