And there goes the beard ...

It's been 4 days since my 2nd chemo, and hair loss is kicking in hard. I have to admit that I didn't think it would go so fast. Over the course of a few days my beard is practically gone. Psychologically it hit me harder than I thought it would. This entire thing, this whole endeavor feels like a battle of wills. Me vs That Dragon, Cancer. It's tough to keep a positive mindset when your sickness becomes so tangible. Every time I look in the mirror I'm reminded of that very fact. Tough doesn't even cut it.

So I'll keep on walking, drawing, painting and gaming to lighten my mood. And if modelling myself after Agent 47 is what it takes to make me feel better about my hairless face, then so be it.

Anxiety

So tomorrow is my second chemo session and I must admit it's making me a bit nervous. Let's hope I handle this one as well as the first one.

So today I made another study from reference; I'm planning to do a clean line pass, and maybe even do a color version. Let's see how far I can push this.

ref: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/379357968597019259/

Rough sketches

These are more sketches from ref. I found some really nice figurines to take inspiration from. I think I'm going to keep doing these rough sketches for now, because I find it to be a really good practice. Since they don't take that long to do, I should be able to do a few a day. That is, if I'm feeling ok.

My next chemo session is coming up in a few days, and I must say that I'm feeling quite good, I've seem to have recuperated quite well from last one. I hope I can keep it up like this. 

I did have a rather unpleasant surprise though: hair-loss already kicked in. I'm really glad I've had my head shaved so the effects are quite minor. Still, it came as a shock, I wasn't expecting it to be this soon. 

More line practice

ref: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/379357968586465916/

Practicing line art from ref

This is way out of my comfort zone, I seem to handle volumes a lot better than lines. I'm going to do a few more of these, i'm intriged :P

ref: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/452048881332821060/

Half orc line sketch

I made this one to help out a friend. It's basically a rework, I gave some pointers while doing this sketch.

Building strength again

After a bad week I'm starting to feel better again. I was extremely tired, had to fight sleep, had trouble eating, but now I'm feeling waaay better. So I went back to painting, trying to work on my brush efficiency. Note to self, practice more !

I like the tree and foreground, but everything else feel a bit too messy for me. My goal is to suggest detail and to keep the brush strokes to a minimum. I'm a big fan of Mark Boedges, he's an oil painter who mainly does environments (check out his work here: http://www.markboedges.com/paintings.php). That's what I'm aiming at. Expect more landscape studies.