This was initially written January 9, 2024 and completed February 21, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge
As discussed in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Week One Evaluation (Pause Announcement), I had to take a break for a while. Now it’s time to at least follow up on that first week.
On day 02, I ended up spending roughly 45 minutes drawing. Not because I felt like I wanted to stop, but because I actually had something scheduled that forced me to stop. Similar to the previous challenge, I did face some motivation issues with getting started. However, once I did start, I did fully immerse myself in the drawing. This time, I also ended up drawing in my room.
Following some issues I had on the previous day, I also decided to disable “hand touch” on my tablet this time. It seems to have resulted in less unexpected behavior, although wanting to zoom in did become more annoying.
As on day 01, I started from scratch. I started with drawing guidelines. After looking at the reference model, I believe for the initial head shape, the vertical line follows a 3:2 ratio, and the horizontal lines are 2:2. (I.e.: They’re the same length as the the lower part of the vertical line). However, despite these measurements, I miscalculated and used a 2:1 ratio for a vertical length of 9cm. (6cm:3cm).
Once that was done, I went back to drawing more guidelines for eye and nose placement. At this point, according to the reference material, I had to split the vertical line (including the jaw) in four equal lengths. With the jaw, the length was 10cm, so four equal lengths of 2.5cm. The center now should serve for the top of the eyes, while the bottom 1/4th mark serves for the nose. The length of the eyes I measured as roughly 1/8, so the bottom of the eyes should be roughly halfway between the top of the eyes and the nose. Those guidelines didn’t end up as horizontal (or parallel to one-another) as they should have been. (Future note: I am not convinced about those exact ratios, so please do not take those to heart)
Unsurprisingly, once these guidelines were in place, I moved on to draw a rough version of the eyes, nose and mouth. At this stage, the eyes were just one big circle each.
The next step was to add eyebrows, ears and initial detail to the eyes. This meant adding pupils and a circle to represent the eyeball itself. Meanwhile, the initial circle of the eye was partially erased. On the previous day, this was where I stopped.
Finally, I opted to continue with the next steps. This means I refined the eyes and added a blush under the eyes. I also changed the placement of the eyebrows a little, and tried to fix the shape of the head. (Although I now realize that this could be partially addressed while adding hair in a future step anyway). Here, I most struggled with the eyes. I redrew chunks of them quite a few times! Here are the results:
I think this drawing isn’t that bad. I’d even say there was some improvement when compared to the previous day. One thing I’ve also realized is that a lot of the early steps just need to be “good enough” and not perfect, since a lot of it ends up being drawn over and removed as more refinements are added. Obviously, it’s important to have adequate proportions, and if it’s not “good enough” things will go on looking off all the way through, potentially skewing the outcome. However, perfection definitely does not seem necessary in those early stages. Looking forward to see how tomorrow goes, and whether I continue improving a bit. I’m also planning to add an extra stage to my drawing, with some hair.
Before I leave you, one final note of embarrassment. I’ve mostly been following the drawings themselves, skipping over the Chinese comments due to a lack of time and the fact I’m still unfamiliar with a lot of the vocabulary present.
This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 03 (2024/01/10)