A Smol Bab

I was going to use yesterday to start catching up on work, but I was still kind of reeling from being stuck for six days and then cramming myself into a minivan with my parents and two noisy birds for the trip home. So I did what I usually do when I feel like crap and I drew Vin again like a selfish git. Because she's my therapy character, apparently.

More than that though, I was itching to put some new knowledge to use before I completely forgot about it.

Bout a day or two before I left for my parents' place, I spent a couple of hours tracing nothing but baby heads and baby bodies.

Why trace a buttload of baby heads? Because when observation fails you, that's how you fuckin learn to draw things, and don't ever let anyone tell you that tracing doesn't serve a purpose. I was really bad at drawing babies, and just looking at them and trying to draw them wasn't helping me. But here, I feel like I learned a hell of a lot just going right over the images with my pencil and observing all the proportions and moosh and stuff.

So yeah, tracing's great. Just, you know, don't be like those tools who trace someone else's artwork almost verbatim and then brag about how their piece totally took them no time (lol 20 min. no ref). Because they didn't. And that shit's deceptive.  

For the record, this is the last time I tried to draw Vin as an itty bitty child of no more than like... 18 months.

Cute and all, but just... not there. Definitely missing those 'I am but a tiny peanut' hallmarks like the giant forehead and whatnot. I don't like going super realistic with my work, but I've been noticing more and more how it tends to fall apart when it doesn't at least have some kind of realistic backbone. Features look pasted-on, and shapes don't look quite right. It's a damn mess.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me babble way more than I'd originally intended with this post.

$5 Patrons can expect both the doodle and the traces in higher res in the bundle at the end of the month. 💜