I’ve talked about my affinity for stock photos on many occasions. In previous posts, I’ve written about royalty free images, photo spamming on social media, and my general love of memes (which tend to lean heavily on stock photos). I just find these images to be very appealing from a portrait study perspective. The facial expressions and/or subject positions are
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Apparently Amdall Gallery is turning into an Elden Ring fanart site, because I just couldn’t move on yet without getting into some of the interesting bosses (also called “demigods” in the game). Specifically, I wanted to draw a couple of the ones I find most fascinating: Starscourge General Radahn and Malenia the Blade of Miquella. The huge battle between the
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I am often amused by the strange processes that seem to govern how I decide what to draw. Personality-wise, I tend to be a planner and a creature of habit. I like routines in life and in drawing, and tend to seek a predictable path to art however I can. That’s probably noticeable just from browsing through any sample of
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Just recently, I rambled on and on describing my approach to sharing multiple related drawings. Over the course of several paragraphs and almost a thousand words, I philosophized about how much I prefer to see drawings split into several posts so I can come across them again individually on the shuffled front page. And yet, here I am with a
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My habits when it comes to artwork typically involve sporadic bursts of motivation. I often tackle one drawing at a time, spending a couple of hours on the project before I move on to something fresh. Sometimes though, I become so inspired about a topic that I work on multiple pieces concurrently or in succession. There are quite a few
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Earlier this summer, our family finally made a much-discussed leap to adopt a little fur-ball. If I haven’t already mentioned our new cat offhand in another post, I am certain he’s at least made some brief cameos in art progression videos as he walks right across the drawing space! As this is our first family pet, there has been a
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In conversations with acquaintances, colleagues, and other various newly-met people, occasionally my drawing hobby comes up. Although not everyone is particularly interested in art, usually I can expect a follow up question or two; something along the lines of “what do you draw” or “using what?” People are usually somewhat surprised to hear that I consider my comfort zone to
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In a couple of ways, I consider this post to be somewhat of a do-over. Months ago, I shared a YouTube video on my relatively new channel covering some details on outline sketches and measurement. Although I was happy with the discussion portion, I was not very satisfied with the artwork that resulted. I wanted to make another outline/pre-drawing video
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It’s taken me quite a while to actually get to the writing portion, but I’m finally sharing the portraits from the most recent giveaway. The original giveaway was back in April, which somehow feels like both an eternity ago and just last week. I guess pandemic life warps time in strange ways. Anyhow, according to the giveaway widget dashboard, this
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I still feel that overall I am improving as an artist, which is nice to realize after two years of becoming re-involved in this hobby. As I’ve mentioned before, I took a (mostly) ten year break, so it makes me happy that I’m still at it and still learning. It’s not a rapid improvement and I don’t really experience any
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Any time my family and I take a trip to the grocery store or Target, we absolutely have to grab one of those bulky carts with the dual kid seats. You know the type; usually brightly colored, sometimes with steering wheels for the kids, but always giant-sized monstrosities. They’re probably annoying to other shoppers because of how much space they
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Since getting back into drawing in 2017, I’ve generally been under the impression that most of my artwork has been of my family. I also had a feeling that the most frequent subject was probably my wife. Because data is fun, I decided there was no point in just assuming or guessing – better to crunch the numbers and find
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I came across a really interesting article a few days ago called How to Be an Artist – 33 Rules to Take you from Clueless Amateur to Generational Talent (or at Least Help you Live Life a Little More Creatively). It’s a crazy long title, but basically the article has some detailed practical advice for artists from an art critic
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I’ve been all over the place lately with my sketches, jumping around to varied subjects like Ghostbusters, memes, Pinterest, and Einstein. I always come back to my favorite portrait subject though; my family. I haven’t done a full accounting of people or types of artwork I’ve done (which would be a fun spreadsheet to make), but I’m sure my wife
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When I started sharing artwork on this site, eventually I decided to create social media profiles for Amdall Gallery on any platform I could think of. I haven’t gotten traction on any others near the level I have on the WordPress Reader, Facebook, or Twitter. But I figured I should at least try to have a presence on elsewhere, just
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