Sketchbook gushing

I got a new sketchbook two weeks ago. It's always the best feeling to finish a sketchbook, because it feels like I'm making so much progress.

 Old one on the right, new one on the left. These are my ideal-sized sketchbooks.

So here, have some of the old sketchbook sketches:

All of these drawings are based off of someone I've seen/know in real life. Actually, the big picture in the middle was reffed from a picture of my roommate. I was concentrating more on getting her body and pose just right, so I ended up making her face look...not good. I'm so sorry, roommate. You are 50 times prettier than that picture. Clearly this page isn't a deep comprehensive study of different female body types. I'm really interested in looking at the whole spectrum of things, especially with females. Being a flat-chested girl with nonexistent hips, I personally feel like my body type is underrepresented in art - at least, that's what I feel. However, I don't want to limit myself to just that body type, I want to represent all types of girls.

The top half of the page is a concept of a piece I want to do of piling as many people as possible on one bike. Still trying to figure out how to pile everyone on top of each other.

Fortunately for me and unfortunately (or perhaps also fortunately, depending on your views of my art) for you, my sketchbook has become more personal as of late, which causes me to limit my scans.

Sometimes I draw feet.

Some people I drew in the park

More people from the park. The kid at the bottom's my favorite.

I have no idea why the scanner cut off the top part of the sketchbook. I didn't do anything different from all the other pictures I scanned. WTF scanner

Some hands I drew during institute. I forgot my scriptures, so what the heck, let's draw my hands.

Yesterday I watched True Grit, whose influence I didn't realize until I listened to the soundtrack endlessly and started drawing out stuff like this. I fell in love with the soundtrack as well as Mattie's character. Her braids reminded me of Rapunzel's from Shannon and Dean Hale's Rapunzel's Revenge, a very good graphic novel. The art in it, done by Nathan Hale (who, as it turns out, grew up just around the corner from me), had a HUGE influence on my art when I first read it a few years ago. I'm also a big fan of this artist's country/western/steampunk style of art and I want to try my hand at some graphic design stuff like that, especially the topography. I love that old-fashioned style. Problem is...I have no idea how to do graphic design. If only Special Agent Oso would come help me