A thing a week 2020, week 5

I'd intended on doing some illustration in last year's challenge but never really got around to it.  These three marked a significant and sadly normal drought.  The last reasonable piece I worked on was something like early 2017 and, since I was never really happy with it, I never posted it.  Before that we're goin' way back here to the heady days of 2016 (and even that was a sketch done a year earlier).

I won't tell the whole story but I ended up with not a lot of time on Monday night and I didn't want to do nothing.  Maybe it was the random art tutorials I watched on youtube last week but I ended up horking around on pinterest and not even drawing inspiration from the bajillion such pins I keep for that purpose.  I picked something that I didn't like a whole lot but that had a good pose and started from there.  The armor is mine but the pose, face structure, and really all that hard compositional stuff is all from the original art.  I'm trying to understand non-metallic metals prior to slapping paint on a fig and selling that in graphite is a step along that path.

I found this experience enlightening.  Apparently mini painting has given me a lot more control and patience than I ever enjoyed when I arted more frequently.  Aside from some screwing around on the first day, everything else went pretty easily.  I wasn't drawing for any particular reason except to do so and these didn't go toward any larger work which is unusual.  Maybe these were easier because I didn't care all that much and could focus on the art.  There's probably a lesson there.  Each piece was an hour or two. 

Techincal crap (if anyone cares):  0.7mm HB mechanical pencil, non-kneadable eraser, and EF Ebony 6325 vintage pencil I bought before it was vintage on folded over 8.5"x14" printer paper bought around the same time.  You can be part of a long line of people being snarky over my choice of art medium if you're into that kind of thing.