The 100 heads in 10 days Challenge was created by Almed Aldoori you can learn more about him and the details about this challenge here. I saw other artist on Youtube and Instagram doing this challenge and at first I was intimidated by it. I thought about, what if I don't see any improvements and this just shows how much my work really sucks? Or What if I still don't like my paintings after all and all work is in vain? I also thought, What if I quit after a few days or I'm not about to do it for 10 days straight and need breaks?
All of those concerns are valid. My intention with this challenge was to see....
- Where I am with my work?
- What areas I need to work on more ?
- Have fun
- Explore my talent and creativity
- Draw faster
- Draw with more confidence
- Have a better layout for my paintings
Before I started this challenge it would take me on average of 1-2 hours to draw and create a layout for my paintings with lots of drawing and erasing. And for the last few ones I haven't like them enough to share on social media because I would notice after painting that something was off with the proportions , lighting, colors, I over worked a piece or for one reason or another I hated my work.
Day 1
Day 2
Since starting this challenge I've started drawing faster without worrying so much on the details. I noticed most of my work is portraits with people not really doing much. They all have resting Bitch face in one way or another. I tend to stick to more dead on portraits with even proportions that all look like school photos that were over posed with no creativity allowed in the subjects. My portfolio had become the very thing I dreaded to see in others work as a model. I realize I haven't really been challenging myself to grow outside of my comfort zone as much as I thought. So this challenge forced me to to well, challenge that. I drew more hair styles, glasses, open mouths, girls blowing bubble, accessories, etc than I have ever before. Instead of drawing something and being frustrated that I have no idea what I'm doing and abandoning the project and starting over to capture it in a way I'm more comfortable I didn't let that bother me. This habit is similar to writing something and realizing you don't know how to spell it so you use a different word or change the whole sentence entirely to work around it.
Day 3
I actually made an effort to refresh my memory of how to draw faces, human anatomy, and I even took a skillshare class on portrait drawing in order to learn how to do the things I forgot or never learned. You'll notice some of these pages have scribbles and doodles of mouths and noses. I almost never painted anyone with and open mouth and I almost never use a variety of noses. When it comes to ears depending on the size of the subject I usually don't put to much stock into it. I mostly cover them with hair.
Day 4
Day 4 and Day 5
Day 5
Day 6
I almost never actually sit down and draw anymore like I used to before I started painting. After I started my journey in Watercolor painting drawing has just become a background or layout for paintings and a way to get the idea out for different projects I'm working on.
Day 7
The more I drew, the more I realized how much I have not learned yet or struggle to draw now. So It might explain why I'm so unhappy with my paintings lately. Because I'm growing and my eye is getting sharper. I'm starting to self critique because for the first time ever I'm actually painting with the intention to grow. Not just to create for the purpose of creating not really caring about the end result. I actually want my work to be good and not just there.
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 10 I decided to test out where I am based on all the hard work and warming up I did within the past few days. I drew bigger faces that filled the page and colored some of them. I liked how the women below has her face smushed and her hands are in an interesting pose.
I like how her head is slighting turned but her body is straight. I added some color pencils to her hair color.
This is the first time I drew a drag queen and an open mouth pose. I used the rule of 3's grid technique of these last drawings to I can get the proportions right. I like this better than drawing small.
I drew a few men and a half drag queen half man. I sealed these in watercolor to keep the charcoal from smudging. I won't be doing this on all drawings in this book because it's not a mixed media or watercolor sketchbook and the paper buckles a lot.
In conclusion, I am very beginner in my work as an artist for the amount of time I have been practicing. I have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to human body anatomy I'm lacking a lot because I mainly draw portraits. As far as portraits go I need more practice of different facial expressions, ears, noses, open mouths, hair, and lighting.
This challenge was fun and I look forward to redoing this challenge in watercolor to test out where I am in shading, lighting, and adding more variety to my work. I would also like to try more art challenges and try Almed's 500 hands in a week. I'm not very good at drawing hands. If it's to complicated I mostly just skip it or do something silly like give my human subject a hook, hooves, tentacles, or hide it. Anything to get out of actually challenging myself to grow.
Day 10
I did explore a lot and it helped to open me up to exploring more in my work. I got to see other artist process and journey on Youtube and Instagram and it inspired me and encouraged me to create more.
One of my greatest intentions in life to always be learning, growing, exploring, and be open to positive things life throws at me. It gives me strength to get through the hard times and makes all worth it in the end, knowing I at least tried and was open to growth.
In the middle of this challenge I painted two subjects one male and one female. The male I tried to be more true to the photograph and explore different coloring techniques. In the female, I wanted to paint a 3/4 view in an interesting pose. I liked the references pose and look, but once I got a general idea of what I wanted to do, I went my own way with it. I only spent max 10 minutes drawing before I started painting. I felt more comfortable drawing and confident in the layout I created in my work.
