Amdall Gallery

This weekend, I made my first clumsy attempt at digital art. And over the last couple months, I’ve been almost exclusively drawing fictional characters from movies, athletes, and performers. That’s been a significant change from earlier in the artwork timeline on this site, when I pretty much always sketched my family. I mentioned months ago I needed to diversify my subjects, and I think I’ve done well to get a variety of people featured.

I will continue to mix things up, but I thought this was a good time to get back to the basics (well, my basics anyway). This feels especially appropriate after those rough digital sketch attempts. To me, my family always represents a safe and comfortable drawing experience. I just know their faces so well, and have drawn them so many times, it’s usually a pretty smooth process.

Although it ended up being really zoomed-in, the drawing I put together was based on my kiddos hanging out in this cool cardboard ice cream truck we got them. We were browsing at Michael’s craft store (actually picking up a couple pencils for me), and came across these cardboard play things on sale for $15. I think the normal price of $30 is a little high for cardboard, but 50% is just about right. It’s really easy to put together, and the kids can color and draw all over it. Here’s how theirs turned out:

We got the thing a few weeks ago, and the girls have been playing with it a ton. So far, it’s really one of the best large toys we’ve bought them. In fact, our oldest was coloring on it again over the weekend. Anyway, the drawing I worked on features the two of them hanging out in their ice cream truck. Here’s the final product:

Overall, it did turn out pretty well. The girls were depicted accurately, and you can certainly tell it’s them. I even managed to get some of their favorite pajamas in the scene; part of our oldest’s Pokemon shirt, and our youngest’s sheep zip up. I think I did a good job capturing their mouths and noses, and more or less got the hair colors right.

Of course, none of my artwork is perfect and this is no exception. I did a somewhat poor job on our youngest’s left eye (left from her perspective) and her face seems like it might be lopsided. One of her eyes is bigger than the other in the sketch, and I drew her a bit cross-eyed. So, it’s not the most accurate depiction of her. To sum this up, getting back to drawing the kiddos was like riding a bike. I jumped right into it easily enough, but I did make some mistakes.

As usual, I made a progression .gif in case anyone enjoys them:

I may get back to some “favorite movie sketches” shortly, but this was a good back-to-normal or get-your-confidence-back drawing. Thanks, you two little ladies!