Kidnapped by Life! (Or Something)

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Soooo.....sorry I've not been particularly good on delivering on blogs recently. I have to admit that I had been pretty much kidnapped by life. While I'm working on commissions that I can't really show until Christmas - after all, they are presents and I wouldn't want to spoil anything - I also had hours to cover at my day job and even had to have an emergency dentist appointment. It wasn't fun. But hey, if a filling falls out, what can you do if you don't want it to end up hurting or getting worse? And lastly, of course, my ongoing battle with technology - though thankfully the Wi-Fi should be sorted by the end of the month (I hope).

Either way, so I wanted to give my apologies first to those who follow my rambling that I've not been up to much here.

Still, I do have things to show you all today! Admittedly, these are from one of my commissions when I was actually practicing/testing out slightly different manga-like styles for a person. While these are all front view, the actual commission ended up rather different. These, therefore, ended up as good practice for turning a photo into an manga sketch.

As mentioned, its the same person, just with different manga styles, seeing what I would end up with in the end. These below were what I ended up with for each sketch:

All of these were based on the same photo and took....about five minutes to sketch, though it was certainly interesting to try slight differences in style. Admittedly the first and last aren't quite as different as, say, the second one, but it was still interesting even with subtle changes. I'm also not entirely used to drawing characters without fringes (which is kinda funny, if you consider I also don't have a fringe, so drawing myself is often awkward) so getting to try a hair style which doesn't involve lots of hair getting in the way was certainly interesting. Who knows, maybe someone similar (but not exactly the same - at least the hair, anyway) might show up on a character in the future.

If nothing else, it was nice to have the practice a little outside my comfort zone.

I do hope that life will not make a second attempt on my person so I can focus on what I'm doing, though. I want to be able to show you guys some interesting things,. after all, whether they be practice sketches or projects. I do hope that you have liked nosing at these, however.

Until next time!

Tara