What I did over Christmas Break

Over Christmas, I completely ignored researching outside of myself. I was feeling so low and uninspired I couldn't bring myself to do much "work" at all. Instead, I worked on being introspective and just spending some time away from my computer and anything I associated wit University work.
I to actually think this gave me a bit more space to breathe and I created quite a bit of work. Nothing with experimental media or reference to anything, I just spent the Holidays creating what I wanted to create.

These are some of the images I produced over the summer. One of the things I really experimented with was drawing hair. I found that one of the best ways to do it was by blocking out the sections into pieces and then shading alternate areas to create depth. If the hair is very dark, like n my Amidala drawing, the shape of the hair was the only shape I really needed. I just kept that bloc and then added highlights for a realistic effect. Drawing hair strand by strand tends to look messy and does not capture the form or shape very well.

Another thing I looked a lot at were fabrics. The way fabrics crease and fall over the body.
I looked at lots of references of abrics to understand how different materials crease and also, I looked at fabrics to reference patterns. Adding fabrics to patterns like on my Sansa drawing, second down on the left, makes fabrics look instantly richer and more expensive.

All the drawings here use direct from screen references except for the Sansa image. And the "Dorian from DA:I attempt (Top Right) (An attempt at drawing a male face with sharper lines and angles. That image uses my own pose/clothing/hair. Fan art has been really fun to draw over Christmas. It has allowed me the freedom to focus less on concept and more on improving my technique of rendering which is currently my main goal.

I want to continue focusing on fan art because of the lack of need, that comes with it, to spend time developing my own characters/designs which will take away from the speed at which I can practice my rendering and painting techniques. What I want to do though, is start using the characters in my own clothing poses as this may give me more of a challenge when drawing than copying from a direct reference.