Thanks neopatogen, Heliux, and rootdraws for the comments!
@Heliux Good advice. I'm always thinking about and trying to keep on top of values. For some reason I have this natural tendency to go more 'muddy' than bold, which is a shame. Can I ask which pieces you were looking at when you had that thought? I only ask because if one of those pieces has since gone into my portfolio then I might want to go back and do a value check on it.
So. My studying has been lacking since my last update. But at the moment I'm kinda scrabbling to get together a portfolio for Industry Workshops which is 18th-21st of August, so I seem to have spent almost all of my time just polishing up and finishing and tweaking portfolio pieces. But I when I looked through my finished pieces I realised that I don't have many male characters for my portfolio (and the ones I do have aren't so well drawn), so I've done a bit of work on that.
Some things:
I've done some work on this piece:
It could possibly become a thing? But I doubt I'll have time to finish it and put it in my portfolio before Industry Workshops
I worked on this, and it was really fun, but the result is kinda meh:
I found an old WIP from a year ago that I might continue, but I'm wondering about that otter in her arms and if that should be there or not....
I tried to figure out how to draw manlymenmen. (Although there is also one little lady sketch in there, don't know why):
Tried to draw out some kind of character:
Tried some colours on him too, but it was all very meh:
Then I was doodling on paper another night , and I finally got a sketch for a (male!) character from the project I'm working on. And I turned it into a digital sketch that I could develop:
So yeah... that's where I'm at with everything! The next time you hear from me I'll probably be over in the crit forum with my portfolio, looking for advice to strengthen it ahead of Industry Workshops. BTW if anyone is going to be at Industry Workshops in London this August, then drop me a message - we could meet up there and say hi. It would be cool to see a fellow dagger in person :)