Pencil and Paper Sketch Work

Hello there everyone! I have a few sketches that I worked on these past couple of days and I am going to share them with you! As the title of this post implies, I sketched these using pencil and paper and the reason for that is it is just simpler to get my ideas down and also have control over my line work. I am having to learn how to exactly draw with pencil and paper because I honestly have never really drawn sketches besides little doodles here and there when I was bored in math class. I think this will be very interesting for me to do and I have so far kept to my schedule of when I will draw so that is very good! So without further ado, here is my very first sketch!

I do have to apologize for the lighting of the picture as I am in a room where all the lights are rather dim and yellow which gave the drawing an odd orange color, so I used a bright flashlight to attempt to make the picture as clear as possible. If you couldn't tell from my drawing, this is my attempt at making a cave environment that opens up to a moonrise of sorts. The human figure is purely to give a sense of how large this cave really is. I did have some issues sketching the cliff sides for each of the two pieces of land that reside inside the cave, but hopefully with practice and research I will be able to get that worked out. The central portion is supposed to be water as well and I personally can make it out to be water, but that's also coming from the creator's perspective.

The next picture is of rather simple thumbnails that I drew for environments so I could test the waters in just coming up with ideas for environments.

The top sketch is another cave idea, but much simpler in detail. The bottom is not my favorite honestly. I really dislike the tree on the right and the water doesn't look like water. The sky is not seperated from the mountains very well and that pillar/rock formation in the center was going to be another tree...but it totally failed so I made people worshiping it instead which is the saving grace for me on this piece actually. Now that I look at it, I see all the flaws and such but I also see how I turned a mess up into something that actually was kind of neat! Sure it isn't much to look at, but I bet if I re-drew this with more detail and on a larger scale I would be able to make it much more appealing. Maybe that's what my next environment sketch will be of. You know what, I'll challenge myself to drawing that bottom sketch to try and grow in some area on it.

This final sketch goes back to the cave environment theme, but is about the sort of creatures that reside in it.

I decided to go with a bat like creature since bats live in caves (and I totally failed at drawing a snake which is the random scribbling above). I would like to continue this sketch into further detail as well because I see potential in it! It was at first going to be a spider, but then it morphed into a bat when I didn't narrow the chin as I was going to. I am not sure how I want the body to look however? I see this face and think of a couple different body styles. The first is a muscular, more human-like figure with enormous wings. Bulging arm muscles and rippling legs, etc. But the other is more frail, yet still powerful. Thin legs and arms, but still show signs of strength. Built more for speed rather than brute force. I am leaning towards the thinner, faster body style as that fits better with the bat idea, but the other could be an interesting twist! Any thoughts on that?

Well everyone, that is all that I've truly worked on in the past couple of days! I'll try to make a new post in a couple of days, but I am going to steer clear of quick, daily posts as those bore me  and probably you as well! Have fantastic days and wonderful evenings!