This was written March 16, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge
Credits: 1
Introduction
Welcome back everyone! Unfortunately, I think I may need to take another break. This latest session made it clear to me that I’ve been getting under the weather and the stress is getting to me (along with sleep deprivation). Which in turn induces impatience and negatively impacts the quality of my learning, along with my ability to apply what I’ve learned. And not only for this Challenge, but also with learning Chinese.
Still, let’s at least go on with this session. Since I’ve been wanting to track these stats, I evaluated my sleepiness as an 8/10, and I started drawing at 10:15pm.
Exercises
This time, I tried to be more mindful during the lines exercise. However, it gradually decayed from an amalgamation of stress and frustration, which resulted in me becoming impatient and rushing. And unfortunately, this state lasted through most of the session. This was also reflected in the wavy lines and circles exercises, although I must admit the wavy lines exercises weren’t that bad today.
Overall, the exercises took me about 5m45s to complete.
Drawing
For the drawing, I opted to revisit the full frontal body. I first drew the initial guidelines meant for measurements. Unfortunately, I think I made these guidelines a little shorter than I’d like, which made things feel a little too cramped. Although this might generally be good practice in the future.
I then started drawing the wire-frame on the same layer, which I think might be a mistake. In the future, I might want to use different layers to limit complications from adjustments. For example, some adjustments caused me to erase part of the guidelines.
I once again struggled with the head, redrawing it a few times. Consequently, I might eventually consider using the circle tools to improve and hasten this phase, only drawing the subsequent phases by hand. They are guidelines after all, and it’s not like I’m shying away from using a ruler.
In terms of drawing the wire-frame, I decided to listen to my past self and draw the lines first, adding the nodes afterwards as I suggested on day 17. However, after finishing the first phase of the wire-frame, I was unconvinced with the torso, and thus opted to restart from scratch. Here’s the first result.
I was happier with the second attempt, having increased the height:width ratio. Still, I eventually realized that the torso was wider than I’d initially planned, likely due to the drawing section being on the shorter side. Regardless, it wasn’t really an issue.
Next up, adding nodes for the elbows, which I realized the book shows as not being centered on the arm’s line, but a little off towards the outside, which I presume is to push the elbow out a little bit and make it feel more natural. I also added hands and chest guidelines.
Next up, drawing the actual outline. I started with the head, which needed a few attempts, and some adjustments using the eraser. I made it a little thicker from adjustments. I then added the limbs, by gradually drawing counter-clockwise. I definitely still have some issues properly understanding the anatomy, but I believe it has improved a little since the beginning. I also ended up trying to apply a few different fixes, in particular to the leg area. Here are a few attempts for reference:
Once done with the outline, I added some muscle lines all over the body. I’m mostly satisfied with the chest area, but beyond that, I’m underwhelmed how the lines turned out on the limbs.
Finally, I added elements to the face before calling it a day. This took a while, and I was still unimpressed with the result. But considering this was a body exercise, I now think it’s “good enough”.
Conclusion
Looking back at this session, it’s not so much the drawing I’m underwhelmed with, but rather my behavior and approach during both the drawing session and the writing. Due to my stress and increasing lack of sleep, I’ve reached a state of “carelessness”. I often thought “eh, whatever”, which is not conducive to learning and improving. Even worse, I almost feel like I’ve been regressing lately! (Though I do realize this is still miles ahead from where I started).
For this reason, I think I need to take a break. However, unlike last time, I don’t plan for this to be an inactive break. I will obviously still have my Chinese studies on the map, but I also have another project I think I should work on (which will hopefully help me with better managing my time and prevent me from getting this stressed and tired). I also have a few smaller posts I want to write. I’ll get into details about this in a separate post, although you might expect me to be a little less active this week.
As for the stats, drawing took me about 48mins, and writing roughly 40mins, along with 43mins spent on reviewing. This sums up to 83mins spent on the blog post, and a total of 131mins overall. This means drawing was roughly 37% of the overall time, and reviewing counted for about 52% of the time spent on the article.
As always, thank you for joining me, and sorry this past week was more of a descent into my own madness. Stay tuned for a new update about my situation, and don’t worry, I don’t intend to let this challenge die! Although I do apologize for having to pause it once again. Have a nice one and take care everyone!
This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Second Pause Discussion