Hello guys. It’s been a relatively quiet week, sorry for my absence. I do come with good news though. Despite not exactly keeping up with blog posts, I have been consistently drawing everyday and making sure I still get some writing done! I have pretty mixed feelings about my productivity, but progress is progress! I decided today I would just post a couple of the stuff I’ve been working on.

This was a drawing I did before really looking into ways to improve my art. The plan was just to draw random things until I figured out what I was doing (great plan I know), so I looked at stuff on my desk and decided to sketch them. This little buddha that I got from an old friend has been on my desk for almost 4 years and was the perfect first item. After sketching it once, I thought it was okay, but I thought I could do better, hence the second sketch. I personally believe the first was is better still, but it was good practice either way. I finished off the session with just practicing pencil control with circles, because I believe my hand control needs some work.

After watching a couple videos on art basics and what to do, I found that the first things I should work on are line work, getting better at drawing shapes, gesture drawing, and perspective. Since then, that’s what I’ve mainly been focusing on, especially gesture drawing since I want to be a comic artist, and it’s the most fun to practice. I started with what is above. The first page is 1 minute gesture drawings. while the second page I spent 3 minutes on each. The very first one is barely more than a simple stick figure, but to be completely honest, it was scary and a little nerve racking to even try. I found myself flustered and overwhelmed, not really knowing where to start or what I was doing. Slowly, I believe I began to figure out somewhat of a gameplan and was more successful. I ended that day with 14 gesture drawings, 7 drawing at 1 minute each and then 7 more at 3 minutes each.

After watching some more videos on gesture drawing, I took another crack at it, timing myself for 2 minutes instead. I found poses on pinterest, set a timer on my phone and got to work. I had remembered in one of the videos that I watched that gesture drawing should almost be skeletal, or at least not just the outline of the body, so I made an attempt at the first one, which came out terribly to me, so I redrew it, outlining the body as I had. I believe these gesture drawings had come out much better than the ones previously and the improvement made me quite happy actually.

The next day, I decided to make a couple more, this time giving myself 3 minuyes and seeing what I could accomplish with the extra time. I produced the 3 beauties you see above. The first one I actually didn’t dislike, but again, I felt like I could do better and this time I think I accomplished that. I captured the actual movement of the pose more accurately the second time, and I also started to build the body up better. Ever since this day, I would construct the body in a similar way, with getting the basic shape of the chest/ribcage and then working down from there. My favorite of that day was definitely the third gesture drawing.

For my final gesture drawing, I wanted to see how much I’d improved from my first day, so I found some poses on pinterest again, set my timer to 1 minute. Immediately, I could see the fruits of my labor. My construction of the body and the motion had improved, as well as my basic anatomy and proportions. I was pretty satisfied with how these all came out, and it made me more excited to keep learning and improving. In the last drawing, I tried my hand at foreshortening and it came out a bit wonky, but for my first time, I didn’t hate it.

Overall, I believe it has been a productive week, despite the endless twitter scrolling and brain fog. Of course, I could have done more, and I hope to do more this week, but I’m happy with what i’ve done so far. My next post will either be another challenge update, talking about the perspective drawings and shape practice I’ve been doing, or a short story I’ve been working on. Hopefully I see y’all there. Happy Sunday and thanks for reading!