daily sketch (digital): "Liv & Dino"

     Every day I wonder what to sketch. When you're a kid it always seemed so easy. Looking back it never seemed like you didn't know what to draw, but as a kid I didn't hold my feet to the fire and draw when I didn't feel like it either. 

     I remember watching a lecture by Glen Keane where he mentioned that in every project he ever took on he would try to get better at something. Even if he was doing stuff he didn't care about or things that he had already done a number of times. For example: If you're animating a dog, and you've already animated dogs before, then he'd step up his game by studying small motions and movements dog makes- the perking of their ears, the the way they drop on their front legs when they  want to play, etc. 

     By learning a little at a time, or by taking note of small, otherwise insignificant details I think what you learn starts spilling over into more of your artwork. I remember noting how far up the eyes of a turtle are on their head the last time I was on a jog by a pond near my house, and after that I started to realize it had begun to show up in not only my drawings of turtles (which weren't many) but anything turtle-like. I'd draw aliens with turtle-like heads and was surprised at how much more turtle-like they looked after I made sure to include that one small detail. Ever since whenever I don't know what to draw more often I think to draw something I'm not used to drawing (and off of reference). All this to say today's sketch was drawn to see if I could learn something of rhinos- and it worked! After looking at some reference, funnily, like turtles, rhinos eyes go further down on their head than I could recall off the top of my head. "Dino" the Rhino, and "Liv" the Otter are just a couple of silly sketches with a bit of surprising knowledge behind them- maybe that's why Dino looks a little smug.