Learning to Draw People Challenge – Upcoming Project

This was written from May 07 through May 09, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back.
As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Three, I’m about to revisit this challenge. I’ve also had some ideas on how to supplement the challenge to both be more motivating and also better guide my learning.

Project Overview

So, what will this project consist of? Well, the idea is fairly simple. Right now, I’ve simply been…meandering, without a clear goal, simply trying to draw different things from my guidebook. Sure, it can be fun and interesting, and I can even learn a lot from it. But ultimately, there’s only so much I’m getting out of it, and in the long term, it has no clear direction. Thus, I figured a project would be a good addition. After all, a lot of courses tend to use projects as a good synthesis exercise. Moreover, it will allow me to stray further from the exact models, to experiment more, and hopefully to exercise my own artistic freedom.

I expect this to be a mid-to-long-term project, considering it’s centered around learning many different things. The goal will be to draw different panels for a consistent and continuous scene. You can imagine this as a few pages in a manga, comic book or graphic novel. Moreover, these panels are pre-selected. I’ve actually had this idea and a draft of the panel descriptions while I was out at an event and feeling down, feeling like an outsider. I reckon this pushed me into thinking/creative mode, which I focused on this project. Having my phone with me, I decided to jot down notes and capture my ideas, leveraging my motivation and being creatively “fueled”. I…did go a little overboard with the ideation phase, but that’s just the initial phase, which can be reworked.

The idea is to have different panels focus on different aspects of drawing, while still having a small “story” and a single character we can follow. What’s more, this will push me to design a character that exists outside the realm of the guidebook, and also force me to learn consistency across drawing, since they’ll depict the same character. Ideally, each subsequent panel should either work on a new aspect of drawing, a more involved version of a previous skill, or combine multiple ones together in a new way. Obviously, since I want a specific narrative, this won’t necessarily be 100% accurate, but hopefully this will still help me to gradually build my skills.

The Panels

So, what ideas do I have for these panels? Let me set the scene: The entire scene will take place in a bedroom, where we have a single character wake up and dress up before heading out (I plan for the character to be male, but the scene could unfold with any type of character). Here are the panels, in order:

Sleeping face (closed eyes, no hair, no ears, but tip of hair)
Eyes open, zoom out a little (see ears, chin, top of head)
Character yawns, zoom out a little more (Working on face expressions)
See character in bed, from above, final zoom out (No blankets, only wearing underwear)
See character in bed, from the side
See character turn on their side, from the side
See character sitting on the bed, from the side (legs still on the bed)
See character with legs dangling from bed, getting ready to get out of bed
Character lowers head into hands, sighing
Character turns head towards alarm clock to check the time
Focus on alarm clock and the time
Character gets up
Character approaches chair with clothes ready on the back
Characters picks up pants
Character in the act of putting pants on*
Character with pants on picks up shirt
Character pulling shirt over head*
Character buttoning top buttons of shirt*
Character with pants and shirt on struggling to puts socks on*
Character walking towards door
Zoom on hand approaching the door knob
Zoom on hand touching the door knob
Framing upper body, character hanging head down and sighing, while hand is still touching the doorknob
Same framing, turning doorknob
Door opening
Door open, “light coming in”, character looking outdoors

In total, this consists of 26 frames, some of which should be fairly complex (for an amateur at my level). However, I do think this should be good opportunity to gradually work on various skills and aspects. As you may have noted, I also added asterisks next to a few frames. Those are ones that I think could be omitted without destroying the scene, if they turn out to be too challenging. They’re mostly clothing interactions, where the character would be in odd poses, which I expect to be fairly complex.

The Goal

As stated before, the main goal for this project is to have something tangible to work towards, and to guide my learning. Along this vein, I am hopeful that this selection of frames should build skills gradually. We go from the simplest version of a face, to a gradually more complex one, eventually emulating emotion. We have simple versions of full body along two different angles, before moving on to gradually more complex poses. We then introduce clothes gradually, although with some complications thrown into the mix. The final few frames involve interacting with the environment and emoting more emotions, but I expect they shouldn’t be much more complicated than what came before. It does, however, help close the narrative, and focus specifically on hand work. Overall, not only should this give me a chance to gradually build my skills, but it should help showcase my progress as well, which should be interesting.

The plan for me is to spend some time figuring out what skills I need for the next frame, and then probably spend a few days working on these skills before moving on to the actual frame. I might even make a few attempts, and unlike before, possibly spend more than one day on a single drawing. We will see how things unfold. As the frames get completed, I plan to showcase them and the whole scene. I may have a page somewhere presenting the scene as it is so far, so you can see the progress in its full glory (or abomination).

Conclusion

There you go, the plan for my new project: a simple manga scene that should have enough variety to grow multiple skills gradually. I’m somewhat excited about this, and looking forward to see how this pans out. I hope you’re also excited! If you have any questions, or recommendations (such as potential improvements to the scene), please leave a comment below. Have a nice one, and stay curious!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 25 – 2024/05/13

Reading in Chinese and the Importance of Iteration

This was written May 02 and May 03, 2024

Hello everyone!
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m currently in Taiwan learning Chinese. And I think it’s time to share some of my experience. Today, I will start with my experience with reading Chinese books. Important note: I’ve been learning Traditional Chinese, as opposed to Simplified Chinese.

A rocky start

A few months before arriving, I purchased a book in a series of “learner’s books”, a retelling of “Journey to the West” with hand-picked vocabulary and grammar. (It is part of a series of books of gradually increasing difficulty).

At first, I tried to read the book every day, looking up every new word and learning how to write them. Unfortunately, being at the beginning of my journey, this book was too advanced for me and I eventually gave up.

An initial improvement

Eventually, after of few months of taking Chinese classes in Taiwan, I decided to give the book another try. Turns out I was better equipped and it went a lot smoother! It took me a few weeks to finish it, during which I learned new words and became more comfortable with reading. I even decided to read it a second time, which went even better.

Choosing my next book

This first book completed, I figured I should continue with a more advanced book. After all, being in Taiwan should make finding an adequate Chinese book a piece of cake. However, finding the right level of challenge is far from trivial. I initially chose a retelling of The Three Kingdoms, but realized after my first session that I was out of my depth.

Accordingly, I started looking for a new book. Perusing in the children’s books section (books for ages 7-12), I searched for a cross-section between adequate difficulty and interesting material. I ended up choosing a Japanese book translated to Chinese (only realizing this after the fact). It’s actually a collection of ghost stories. Opening the book at random and looking at the vocabulary, it appeared to be manageable, and thus purchased it.

New troubles arise

Unfortunately, I soon realized this might actually be harder than I expected. Regardless, I opted to push through. My first strategy was to read a few pages, and whenever I stumbled upon vocabulary I didn’t know (or couldn’t remember), I would look it up and just carry on, trying to read for meaning. Alas, it soon became clear to me that I probably wouldn’t retain a lot of vocabulary this way, and should change my approach.

I thus figured I should put more focus on the vocabulary itself. As such, I would read a few pages and keep a list of “interesting vocabulary”. Once done reading, I would retain approximately ten words, which I would study and try to learn. But this started to overwhelm me, as extra assignment on top of work, other activities, and even pilling onto the reading activity itself. It felt likely to jeopardize my new habit, and so, it was time for a new strategy.

A new inspiration

Overwhelmed with the sheer volume of new vocabulary, I shifted my focus to getting accustomed to it, only learning how to read said vocabulary. Consequently, I would read one page at a time. First I would read it with the vocabulary I knew. Next, I would re-read it and look up each word I didn’t know. Finally, I would re-read the page until I could remember exactly how to pronounce every single character. (luckily, the dictionary Pleco can display a list of recently searched vocabulary, which is tremendously helpful).

While ideally, I would remember the meaning of the words, pronunciation was the priority, since meaning could also be gleamed from context. (After all, that’s how children learn new vocabulary. I also had experience learning vocabulary this way when learning English as a second language, interpolating meaning from context, as opposed to looking up words). This brought me significant success: I did learn many new words, became more confident with identifying new characters, and it made learning how to write characters in class easier, in large part due to being exposed to many of them from my reading. However, it was still a grueling and arduous tasks.

Eventually, I also started to write down questions I had: Vocabulary or turns of phrases I didn’t quite understand, new grammar points I noticed but wanted to understand how to use, connections in the language I thought I identified, etc… I would then ask questions to the teachers at my school, which has been incredibly helpful!

But I should reiterate that, in spite of the progress, this felt excruciating. It was very slow, sometimes taking an hour and a half for two pages, and draining my focus and mental capacity. I often felt demotivated and it took time for the benefits to become noticeable. But being stubborn, I pushed through anyway.

Fortunately, while I was initially worried I might be completely wasting my time, it eventually became apparent that I was gaining something from this (To be clear, I’m not saying this was the best way to learn). We recently had to take a mock standardized test with a listening and reading component, for which I didn’t practice (not knowing about it ahead of time). My results for the listening part were ok, acceptable when considering the material covered in class versus this standardized test: a 60/80. For the reading section however, my results allegedly exceeded those of of my peers, at 79/80. And this is also reflected in our discussed experiences. While I sometimes re-read the prompts multiple times before properly understanding, I did eventually got it (mostly). Meanwhile, from what my classmates and friends said, they struggled more with understanding the texts. They also felt like they ran out of time, whereas I didn’t really feel the time pressure for the reading section. And most strikingly, I seem to be the only person with such a wild discrepancy between reading and listening, with a difference of 19 points (most of my peers usually had difference of about 5 points). While it’s purely anecdotal (so take this with a grain of salt), it seems likely that my reading practice contributed to this outcome.

An interesting note is that, as I was progressing through the book, I was simultaneously progressing through my classes. Thus, my vocabulary was gaining from both the book and the lessons, creating a mutual reinforcement. And around the end of the book, I felt like my reading comprehension had drastically improved, feeling like I eventually understood what I was reading and better followed the overall narrative (a stark improvement over the first few stories). And eventually, I reached the end of the book, and had to decide what to do next.

But in retrospect, how well did this strategy work? Well, a lot of days felt like a painful trudge through sludge, and I had a lot of trouble remembering characters long-term, mainly remembering characters that had a major presence. Moreover, because I didn’t focus on it, the meaning of the vocabulary often didn’t stick. However, as mentioned above, it still seems to have helped me improve my reading abilities, and I’ve definitely learned from it. There were even a few happy and proud moments through this. For example, I remember reaching a page which I could mostly read on my first attempt. It felt really special to me. Obviously it happened on an “easier page”, but still. I also had moments where I decided to look at the dictionary’s “Chinese definition” first, where I understood without having to look up the English translation.

Time to reevaluate

So, with the first read-through complete, what next? At first, I decided to take a break and read in English for a bit. But eventually, I opted to return to this same book, now ideally better equipped for it. I also figured I should adapt my strategy. First, I opted to once again go page-by-page, but this time, I modified the “in-depth” phase. This time, I took note of interesting or recurring vocabulary, or words I had forgotten how to write. I would then immediately write them a few times, with their pronunciation, to try to learn them (Some new words I would just omit). The idea was that forcing myself to write them should help me remember them. Once done with this phase, I would reread the page until I knew how to pronounce every word (just as I used to). Turns out, it usually took me less time than before to remember how to pronounce new words, which was good. (Though do note I’m also improving, so it might not be due to the technique itself). However, doing this daily for a few pages was still very time consuming, and there were a lot of words that still faded away after a few days. So it still felt like slow and grueling progress.

A potential breakthrough?

Eventually, out of exhaustion and curiosity, I opted to read the rest of a chapter without looking up any of the vocabulary I didn’t know, in order to see how much I understood. Turns out, I could understand the narrative pretty well at this point, despite some vocabulary gaps. This led me to wonder whether this might be a better approach.

Subsequently, I had a discussion with a teacher, and eventually settled on a hybrid approach, which I’ve now tried for two days. This is split into a few phases:

Review previous day
In-depth reading
“Shallow reading”
Review same day

The in-depth phase is basically the last approach discussed, where I learn to write some new characters, and still learn how to read every single character. This is done for a single page.

During the review phase, I reread the one page from the in-depth phase of the target day (Either today’s or yesterday’s).

During the “shallow reading” phase, I read the next ~10 pages, without worrying too much about vocabulary I don’t know. If I’m either very curious about a word, or frustrated about not remembering it, I will look it up. Otherwise, I just move on.

So, what’s the rationale behind this new strategy?

I think it’s still very valuable to try to learn new characters, and going in-depth for part of it. Limiting it to one page should, however, make it more manageable. (Less time-consuming, less draining, and hopefully better retention)
Going back over the one page on the next day should allow for better retention.
The “shallow reading” should be less draining, and allow me to absorb more things from context, as opposed to directly from the dictionary. It should also help develop normal reading skills, useful for day-to-day life, or school situations/exams.
Since vocabulary can often be clustered in specific areas of a book, new vocabulary obtained through the “deep reading” phase should usually reappear in the “shallow reading” phase (and thus the next few days), helping further cement it.
The “shallow reading” phase should allow me to preview upcoming material and vocabulary.

Thoughts

If I had to redo it, what would I do? For starters, the book I chose was way too difficult for my level. I would definitely advise to start with a book of adequate difficulty, instead of stubbornly pushing through something that’s out of your league.

In terms of strategy, I would probably first start with the technique of reading a page until I can read every character on it: first focusing on reading and exposure, instead of writing. However, I would limit my scope, instead of going through an entire book with hundreds of pages. Maybe a small children’s book, a single chapter, or even a collection of about 10-20 pages. I’d iterate over this scope a few times until I could properly remember and understand the vocabulary, before moving on. Unfortunately, when using a whole book as your scope, the frequency of recurring vocabulary tends to be more limited, making it harder to commit the vocabulary to memory (at least in my experience).

Once I comfortable with the material within scope, I would either:

Move on to my new technique, focusing on writing characters
Skip right away to the next scope

If I opted to focus on writing here, I’m sure I could handle more than a single page at a time, since I’d be more comfortable with the vocabulary within the scope.

Obviously, I would also keep questioning what works and what doesn’t with this strategy, before considering how to iterate.

But: Why not start with this strategy right away? That’s a good question. For starters, I hadn’t thought of it until I started writing this. Yet, I would like to give my current technique a chance before trying something new. I might actually try this once I complete the current chapter I’m reading (which may take some time, going at a pace of one page a day). Or honestly, whenever I start being unhappy with the current strategy.

Conclusion

Through each of these strategies, I evaluated whether it worked, and what I could try to improve. Sometimes, it was a huge departure from my previous strategy, but it always served as an experiment. I hope what I’ve shared today can help you understand the value of iterating through your process. Each step should serve as a lesson, and should hopefully get you closer to something that works for you. Although it’s important to remember that, what “works for you” might also be a moving target, since we’re also growing and changing over time. Thus, what works for me today might not have worked for me a year ago. And similarly, what works for me might not work for you. So I’d encourage you to experiment on your own processes and iterate to figure out what works best for you!

On that note, good luck with your own projects and endeavors, and remember to keep trying to trying different strategies! What matters is not whether what you’re currently doing the best and most optimal solution, but that you try things out, evaluate them, think of potential alternatives and refine your findings into a next iteration. I wish you all success on your own journeys. And as always, stay curious!

Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Three

This was written April 29 and April 30, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Introduction

Welp, it’s officially been a month since the start of my hiatus, and I really want to get back into it. I may have “fallen” twice already, but I’m planning to keep getting back up and figure out what works best for me! As mentioned in April Update, I feel ready to resume this challenge, and have some thoughts on how to approach it this time.

When will I resume?

This is the most obvious question: when shall I actually resume? My current plan is to resume the challenge on Monday May 13. Why that date in particular? Two main reasons:

I have a Final Exam on May 10, and want to make sure to study for it before it happens.
With the new strategy I want to implement (discussed below), I would rather start on a Monday as opposed to a weekend (Plus it also be my birthday weekend).

Is the date actually going to be final? Not necessarily. I could see myself starting a little early, though ideally not any later.

Strategy

General Schedule

One of the things I’ve noticed with the previous runs is that I manage to last maybe a week or two before my motivation and energy both start to wane (along with an increase in sleep deprivation). Similarly, it seems that while working on projects, I tend to have “short-term” bursts of high motivation before getting fatigued, and I’m wondering whether I could make use of that. Accordingly, I want to try out a “week on – week off” strategy, where I have a full week of daily drawing, followed by a full week off, and rinse and repeat. This would hopefully help me make better use of my motivation, and also lead to a better life balance, since I could use the week off towards other activities (such as exploring Taiwan).

I have not yet decided whether I’ll also be drawing during the weekends or not, I’m still torn between the two alternatives. I’ll probably see how my first week goes before deciding. Still, 5 days every two weeks is still be better than my current track record.

Also, I want to retain the ability to get “credits” to help manage unexpected situations. As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Two, it allows me to draw during an off-day to gain a “credit”, which can be used to “skip” a normal day of work, although without affecting my normal posting schedule. I believe it was a really good addition to my last attempt.

Additionally, and very importantly, I’ll once again want to “review” the new strategy at the end of the first week. Although by the nature of this strategy, I should also have a review after the second week of drawing for a proper evaluation.

Stats

One of my concerns has been how long each individual session takes. Thus, I decided to look at some statistics. Thankfully, I recorded some of that information. Here is a screenshot of some of these stats:

One of the first things to notice is that drawing was about a third of the duration (articles taking twice as long to write), which seems a little intense. Similarly, reviewing the article sometimes took about as long as writing the article, which also seems off. Therefore, I would like to modify how I tackle these sessions to (hopefully) spend my time more judiciously.

Individual sessions

Following the above, I think I should streamline my process and make it more consistent. Here are a few changes I would like to try:

I would start with the drawing phase as per usual, but with a notebook in which I would take timestamped notes.
After drawing, I would review the video, take screenshots, and take additional notes.
With the images and notes ready, I would clean up and rearrange the notes into logical topics, sketching the narrative. (While the exploration should remain mostly linear, the rest of the article and the takeaways could be better presented). The end-result should consist of different sections, each with a very rough draft.
With a rough sketch ready, I would flesh out the article for a proper draft.
The final step would be to review the article.

I also think I’ll need to monitor the time spent in each part, and different time ratios. Thus, I will likely want to “timebox” how much time I spend on the article itself (and each phase of the process).

My intuition is that, while it feels intense for an article to take longer to write than the time spent drawing, it kind of makes sense, since I need to analyze the process, internalize, and synthesize what I want to write about it. However, the writing phase being twice as long (which happened on a few occasions) feels concerning. In a similar vein, it feels like reviewing should not take longer than the actual writing. I feel like it realistically shouldn’t take me more than 2/3rds as long. Still, I haven’t yet decided what ratios I should aim for, and it will probably require experimentation too. I expect to start with initial guidelines, and which will evolve over time (or be discarded entirely).

I will, however, keep in mind that there might be a reason for such ratios to arise naturally. Accordingly, I will remain open to the idea that these ratios might be ideal. Nonetheless, I think cleaning up my process and trying something new won’t hurt, and might give me valuable insights and new tricks.

Motivation

Another addition to this run is a larger “mid-term” goal. In the past, I was simply learning to draw different things, with no clear goal, nor project I was working towards. I think that lack of direction worked against me, both in terms of motivation and having a clear learning plan. Accordingly, I decided to instigate a project. The goal would be to make a small “manga scene” consisting of a few panels chosen ahead of time (through a description). It would be aimed at building different skills throughout the panel progression. This would include a single persistent character (modeled consistently), as opposed to blindly following the models in my book.

Ideally, I would be to practice the skills required for the panel a few times, before moving on to the actual panel, which I could add to the sequence. The scene I’ve envisioned is not the most exciting, but I’m hoping it can serve as motivation and that I can get something out of it, no matter how “simple” it might feel. And I think it might be cute, interesting and maybe insightful to see a few pages of panels where we can (hopefully) see my gradual growth.

Conclusion

Stay tuned for my third attempt, which should start May 13, and will utilize a new strategy. Hopefully, this should work better, and also be a little more interesting for all of you, since I’ll also be working towards something more tangible.

Take care everyone, and remember to stay curious!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Upcoming Project

April Update

This was written April 28, 2024

Hello everyone and welcome back.
Well, I haven’t exactly been active this month, which is why I wanted to take the time to write this post.

First of all, I did work on the Youtube extension mentioned in Youtube Extension – Introduction, and have a prototype that fulfills most of the initial needs, although it does have some bugs that I will need to iron out. I’m also daily driving it, which should help me a bit. But while I am still planning to write posts on the topic, I think it will definitely be challenging, since my goal is to bring to a level where my thoughts and process can transpire, while also making it beginner friendly. But I just need to sit down and find some time to go through my videos and write some posts.

Next up, I have posts on the back-burner that I should write. For instance, I’ve continued swimming, and have some extra thoughts to share about the experience (although it will probably be one of the last posts about swimming, since there’s gradually less to say). I also have a lot of ideas regarding my experience with learning Chinese, including important lessons I’ve learned and the tricks I think helped me most.

As for the drawing challenge, I expect some of you might wonder whether I plan to revive it. I’ve had a lot of thought on the topic, and I already know how I want to approach it next, in a way that should be more sustainable and more interesting. I just need to iron out the details, post an update, and just get started.

Beyond that, I keep thinking of so many things I could and want to do, making it hard for me to keep my focus on one thing and succeed at it. But it’s not too surprising, I did choose to name this blog “Shawn Meanders” for a reason. Consequently, I probably should find a way to restrain myself and narrow my focus, bringing a project to a close (or pause) before moving on to the next attractive project. Indeed, the alternative seems to be stretching myself too thin.

Finally, there are a few changes I think I should make to this blog, the first one being a “newsletter”, where you can subscribe to get updated (probably weekly) about new articles I’ve posted. But this requires doing some research, and I worry it might add an extra cost to this non-monetized blog. Still, this is something a few friends have asked for, and it’s great for “retention”, and fairly impactful when taking long pauses like I just did. I might also look into RSS as an extra option. On the topic of this blog not being monetized, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think it would make sense for me to add an option for people to “tip” me? Possibly something like “Ko-fi”. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments (about this, or other aspects of my blog).

I think that’s mostly it for my updates. Hopefully I should be getting back into a better flow soon (Although it may be delayed by the imminent final exam). Although, I’m soon adding one year to my age, and somehow that tends to help serve as a motivation booster with new habits (That’s how I got into reading daily a few years back after all).

Take care everyone!

P.S.: Having struggled a bit with my mental health lately, I want to take a moment to highlight the importance of it. If someone you care about seems off lately, consider reaching out to them and offering to talk or listen to them. If you’re not feeling too well yourself, reach out to your close ones, or to professionals. Remember: you’re worth it!

Starting to Swim (Part 2)

This was written March 10, 2024

Introduction

Hello everyone,
As I mentioned in Starting to Swim, I’ve recently been trying to learn how to swim. Since that post, I’ve gone swimming twice more, and plan on going weekly (I’m actually planning to go for a fourth time later tonight). Although I do wonder if I should start going twice a week (As a nod to a friend reading my blog, let’s not open up the bi-weekly vs semi-weekly vs fortnightly debate over here, haha). Since part of the goal is to also improve my physical health, I think going more often should be beneficial.

Welp, without further ado, let’s dive into it (pun intended) and discuss how it went and what I’ve learned. Do note that unfortunately, I didn’t take any notes, so everything is from memory.

Swimming

To start with, let’s bring up one issue I had during my first session: forgetting my towel. Well, both other times I made sure to remember to bring both a towel and cleaning products (e.g.: shampoo). It’s definitely improved my experience at the end of the session. As for the time spent in the pool, I believe I spent between 75mins and 90mins on both instances, although I’m not 100% sure.

One of the main things I’ve been trying to learn holding my breath underwater. This is because it’s something I initially found terrifying, have been struggling with, and yet consider an invaluable skill.

On my second session, I had definitely regressed a bit compared to the end of my first session, but it’s to be expected: There should be variance between sessions, and I need to warm up when it comes to new skills. But through practice, it gradually came back. Although it should be noted a lot of water found its way into either my mouth or my nose. Still, I must say the most important thing I’ve learned here is to keep my fear under control, and keep a check on potential panic. During both sessions, I ended up swallowing some water on a few occasions, but managed to stay calm. Instead of getting up and coughing out water, I simply brought my head above water and kept swimming, trying to get rid of the small amount of water.

Here’s another thing I realized while practicing holding my breath while pinching my nose: sometimes while underwater, I might have a reflex that feels similar to breathing, but which I think is just displacing air between different parts of my insides. It’s similar to a hiccup, but doesn’t necessarily result in swallowing/breathing water, as long as you don’t follow up with a proper breath. It’s definitely stressful the first few times, but it’s manageable.

Beyond holding my breathe while stationary, I also decided to combine it with swimming itself! So, thinking back over what I believe I’ve seen professional swimmers do, I decided to try to put my head underwater and turn it sideways in sync with my strokes to take a breath.

Forward Stroke and trying to breathe between strokes.

I would do a right stroke with my head underwater, and then a left stroke when I would raise my head to the side and take a breath.

Yet, I’ve faced a struggle: the breathing time feels too short, having to both breath out and then back in. Thus, I amend something I’ve said in my previous post, it might be useful to breath out while underwater, reducing how much breathing is necessary while your head surfaces. As an addendum, practicing this resulted in my mouth gradually being filled with water. I didn’t swallow any of it, but it’s still something to adapt to.

Another thing I’ve decided to experiment with was staying underwater while stationary. This lead me to think about my buoyancy, and experiment a bit with it. While my lungs are full, my body naturally tries to surface, making it harder to stay underwater. Thus, if I want to stay underwater longer, I need to partially empty my lungs. Unfortunately, exhaling underwater would often result in my goggles filling up with water (I have yet to determine whether that’s due to the bubbles, or the way I move my face/frown). However, I’ve found ways to take a breath and exhale a bit before diving my head underwater. I found that an interesting experiment, trying to balance the amount out so I could last a decent amount of time underwater, while diminishing my buoyancy, but without sinking like a rock.

Due to heavy struggles with the “sideways head breathing technique”, and getting annoyed with it, I opted to look for an alternative exercise. Thus, I decided to try to dive into a dog crawl with my head underwater. Then, between strokes, I would pull my head out of the water (upright) and try to breath out and in quickly, sometimes a few breaths, before diving back underwater. I would stay stationary while breathing to avoid “cheating” the distance. Doing this, I aimed to train my breathing technique and lung capacity.

Speaking of avoiding the sideways breathing techniques, one extra experiment dealing with holding my breath came during my latest session. I decided to see how long I could go with a single breath, and so practiced using the front stroke with my head fully submerged. On good attempts, I managed to go for roughly 8 good strokes, and covered a little more than 1/3 of the pool, which I think shows a decent improvement to how I hold my breathe. I also tried to go back out of the water and limit myself to just a few breaths before diving back in and continuing while holding my breath. On most such attempts, I’d cover the entire length in about 3 dives, which isn’t bad. (If you’re curious, the length is of 25m).

Finally, other than practicing how to hold my breath, I also tried to practice some strokes. The main ones I practiced were the front stroke, the dog paddle and some personal version of what I imagined for the “froggy” (the breast-stroke). Looking it up online right now, my custom variation is definitely very different from what people do. Here are two things I learned from my experiments:

With the front stroke, getting your hands above water really makes a lot of sense, since air has a lot less friction than water, so the forward motion of one arm barely has drag, while the other properly uses the underwater drag.
For my version of the “froggy”, I realized that “finishing” the motion, continuing until my hands basically touch my body, was really important. There’s a lot of strength in the last portion, and it translated in good forward momentum for me.

My variant of the “froggy”. Not that I push my legs straight back, and when going forward, I move my arms along my belly to limit drag.

I even decided to experiment with ridiculous techniques such as swirling my arms “like a tornado” (Sorry, no drawings for this one, this is left as an exercise for the reader’s imagination). I moved my left arm clockwise and my right one counter-clockwise (To prevent me from being dragged left or right). I experimented with both arms in sync, and also with both arms out of phase. These might not be very useful, but they were still fun. Moreover, I think experimenting, trying out new things and being imaginative can be really useful and important when learning something: it can help deepen your understanding, it keeps the mind active, and well…that’s the basis of discovering new things. So don’t get discouraged because something seems goofy, silly, or potentially useless. Try new stuff out!

Conclusion

Well, 3 weeks going on 4 is definitely a great start for this new habit, and I feel like I’m learning and improving a lot, which both is and feels great! And I think there are multiple reasons why I should keep on swimming: It’s a great full-body exercise, it’s a useful skill to learn (for example, I’d love to try kayaking, and being able to swim would definitely make it safer) and I find it relaxing. Unfortunately, as I’ve realized during my last session, while it can help manage stress, it can’t fully alleviate it, and it’s possible to stress about one’s life while in the pool (which can be a bit distracting and get in the way of the actual swimming). Regardless, I’m happy with where I am right now, and look forward to see where this gets me.

Take care everyone, and stay active!

Youtube Extension – Introduction

This was written April 02, 2024

Introduction

Hello everyone,
As mentioned in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Second Pause Discussion, I have been planning to develop a Youtube extension to improve my productivity. In this post, I’ll describe my current problems with using the platform, potential solutions, along with a roadmap of the features I want to include. Not that it will be a Firefox extension, as opposed to a chromium extensions. (Since that’s the browser I use)

I’ve been thinking about such a project for a while now. The goal is not only to develop an extension to benefit my personal requirement, but also to share my thought process when tackling a programming project and show people not just how one might accomplish such a project, but also how one even approaches problems with unknowns. I also want to help you gain the confidence to solve such problems yourself, and be able to tackle more personal issues when dealing with technology. And obviously, I’ll want not only to show the solution I end up with, but also the issues and struggles I encounter along the way.

Disclaimer

A disclaimer should be in effect: I do have a background in mathematics and computer science, along with industry experience in software engineering, which means I have experience with abstract thinking and this kind of problem solving. I’ve also already tried to solve this specific problem before (a while ago), which means I know some of the issues I might encounter. However, my expertise with the front-end (what you actually see when browsing the internet) is actually limited. Thus, I’ll be exploring new territories and share how I approach such unknowns. My solutions won’t be perfect, and I’m definitely not the best engineer around, but I’m hoping I can impart some knowledge regarding problem solving, how to break down a problem, how to debug a solution, and also give you the confidence necessary to tackle yourself such issues/annoyances with products you use on a regular basis.

Problems and Solutions

As I’ve mentioned previously, Youtube tends to be a time-sink for me. During the week, I get to my desk around the end of the day and just start browsing Youtube endlessly, mindlessly going through recommendations, and usually barely getting any lasting value from it. I often forget what I’ve watched, and rarely get lasting value from these sessions. And all that time “wasted” gets in the way of both my studies and any projects I would like to tackle. And let’s not forget this can lead to “sleep procrastination”, where I just keep watching videos instead of going to sleep, further compounding my issues.

Based on this, what are the issues I can identify and do something about? Here are the main points I can think of:

The Youtube shorts are an endless stream of content with a low-barrier to entry. It means I can simply press a button to get the next bite-sized piece of content.

Mindlessly scrolling through Youtube Shorts

The Youtube recommendations make it too easy to continue watching beyond the “current video”. It’s also easy to add a lot of interesting looking videos as extra tabs to watch afterwards. This isn’t surprising based the nature of modern content, which tends to be click-bait by nature, but it still tends to be unhealthy for me.

Video recommendations next to a video – (Ads erased from screenshot)

Video recommendations presented at the end of a video

By the nature of the incentives Youtube has put in place, I tend to have “FOMO” (fear of missing out) with a lot of recommended videos, which pushes me to continue watching more and more videos.
I’m passively consuming Youtube, instead of actively using it. This is to say, I just take in whatever it gives me, without actually looking for it. In my opinion, there’s a big difference between passively and actively consuming content: looking for something and trying to engage with it, as opposed to being served different things and consuming them as they come. In the latter case, there is no incentive to fully engage with it, or search deeper to better understand it. It’s just something to be taken and thrown away afterwards. (This might not be your experience with it, but it’s been my personal and subjective experience over the years).
By default, Youtube autoplays videos based on the next recommendation. However, that’s something that can be disabled and remembered. (I recommend disabling it)

*Note that all screenshots were created using a “blank youtube account”, and starting with “Tested”, which felt like a “neutral” Youtube channel.

Based on these points, I can see a few solutions I could enact. But first, I can notice a theme in terms of the mentioned issues:

There is inertia when it comes to continuously consuming this sort of content. This is because the energy required to continue is too low. I would thus like to make the alternative easier, or more tempting.
The platform wants to gain your attention and make you want to click on more videos, whether it’s something you truly care about or not. (Unsurprisingly, considering “clickthrough rate” is considered an important metric).

Based on these, here are the core potential solutions I see at a glance:

Remove Shorts from the homepage.

Homepage recommendations – Long form and Shorts

Prevent Shorts pages from scrolling infinitely.
Remove recommendations from a video’s page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
Limit recommendations to subscribed channels.

Note that I’m not sure whether I can implement these or not, but if I could, I believe I would have a healthier relationship with Youtube.

Goals

Accordingly, here is an initial list of goals/milestones I would like to accomplish. My initial scope:

Create a basic extension with a straightforward change that can be tested locally. (Learning the basics of web extensions)
Remove Shorts recommendations from the main page.
Remove recommendations from a video page.
Remove recommendations shown at the end of a video.
Permanently add extension to my browser (Potentially by adding it to the Firefox extensions “library”).

With these in place, I think I would have a solid prototype to work with, and my experience should be improved.

Stretch Goals

There are a few extra features I think could be really useful to add (a few of which I’ve already mentioned), which aren’t core, nor part of the initial scope:

Prevent Shorts page’s infinite scrolling. It might be ok to watch Shorts from time to time, but I shouldn’t allow them to turn into a never-ending stream of content.
An interface to enable or disable different features.
A way to disable recommendations for a specific channel, and store it into a list that can be edited in the future. There are some channels I find really “easy” to watch to “pass time”, but it’s not always good for me to go down that road.
Add a way to track how much time is spent during a day on Youtube
Add ability to trigger certain actions based on certain conditions (E.g.: After x-mins a day, disable Youtube).
Add ability to treat music differently.
Add ability to treat videos in other languages differently (E.g.: I presently consider watching Chinese videos more productive, no matter the content, since it’s helping me with my language acquisition).

Above, we have a sizeable list of features that could be useful, although I’m not sure how easy or realistic implementing them would be. It’s definitely interesting to think about such features, but it’s important to disregard them for now. I presented them to illustrate how easy it is to simply generate a lot of extra features, causing unnecessary “scope creep”. For this reason, I believe it’s important to keep in mind what the “MVP” (minimum viable product) is, and try to keep the scope at a minimum level (especially at this early stage). Otherwise, this project might spin out of control, and become too intimidating. For this reason, I will stick to the “core features” for now. Once those are complete, I might consider adding new features, based on my needs at that point (Which might be different from what I might predict now).

Conclusion

This is definitely something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, both to help others learn how to solve issues with software on their own, and as part of a different goal to “Reclaim My Focus”, since a lot of technology I use is trying to fight for my attention, whether through push-notifications, click-bait or retention-techniques. I may eventually have a separate post on that topic alone, along with other projects I’ll want to share.

With everyone’s needs being different, it can be useful to know how to personalize your own experience with the different tools you’re using, in order to improve it.

This said, I’m planning to start working on this project soon, and I hope it’ll have the desired effect. I also hope you will find it helpful, either through learning, being able to use such a tool, or making you consider about how you use technology.

Stay tuned for more content in the near future. Stay curious and keep on learning!

Learning to Draw People Challenge – Second Pause Discussion

This was written March 28, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome back,
As stated in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 23 (2024/03/16) – Dawn of a new Break, I had to take a break from my Challenge once again due to some issue I’ve been facing. I decided I would talk a bit about these issues, along with what I’m planning to do in the interim.

Stress and Issues

Let’s first talk about the various contributors to this pause. First of all, the primary reason for coming to Taiwan was to learn Chinese, and this should remain a priority. Obviously, my Chinese classes require both time and mental effort. On top of that, I try to read in Chinese every day, which can take a few hours (for barely any pages), and leaves me mentally drained. This thus limits the amount of effort I’m able to expend on other endeavors.

Speaking of time, I do spend a lot of time on transit, taking the metro and bus from where I live to school and back, along with some significant delays while waiting for the bus. This is a non-negligible chunk of my day that can’t be disregarded, during which I tend to be idle and not really “productive”.

Beyond that, I’ve also been stressed. Not only do I have exams every week, but it’s also been tax seasons, and my current situation complicates matters. I also have to figure out what I’ll to do this summer, and the uncertainty is eating at me, along with worries of issues with the timeline and my visa.

Next, through a combination of different elements (including insomnia, stress, and the amount of things I was trying to handle at once), I was becoming sleep deprived, which negatively impacted my ability to focus, and in turn both my motivation and ability to perform involved tasks. This means that forcing myself to stay up later for the challenge gradually made my situation worse, and I therefore need to find a solution on this front.

Another big issue is how much idle time I waste on the internet, especially during the evening or weekend. A big example of this is Youtube browsing, continually and mindlessly watching videos, yet not getting any value from it. Shorts in particular are rather egregious and problematic. I start watching some videos, but have such a hard time stopping, even if I know I ought to.

I also shouldn’t understate the fact I’ve been trying to spend some time with new friends I’ve made in Taiwan, along with just exploring some areas, or trying to get new experiences here. I’m visiting a completely different part of the world, I might as well try to make the most of it. Moreover, I think such activities ought to be good for my mental health, which is primordial for achieving any of my goals.

Finally, the time I spend on my articles can undoubtedly be overwhelming. I first need to spend time on the action itself (in this case drawing). I then go meta and analyze what I did while writing about it. But it doesn’t end there, since I also review my article afterwards, which also requires a significant chunk of time. (And funnily enough, in classic Shawn fashion, I’m sometimes tempted to go another layer of meta deep and write an article about my review process, the kind of changes I make and what I’ve learned on that front). All of that usually results in a few hours spent each day on this project, which can get into conflict with the other previously mentioned elements.

Priorities

So, a lot of these points definitely highlight that I need to organize some of my priorities. Some priorities that should rank higher than this blog and the drawing challenge include:

Learning Chinese
My Health (Which is why I started swimming)
My Mental Health
My Sleep
Enjoying my time in Taiwan

This is just a quick blurting out of my thoughts, and I should personally do a deep dive, but it’s still a useful thing to quickly consider, and try to balance. I also think it’s important to note that (and forgive me, this will be a little abstract):
Even if element A is more important than element B, it doesn’t mean I should completely neglect B for the sake of A. For example, if I decided socializing was more important than something else, it doesn’t mean I should just spend 100% of my time socializing, but instead that I should prioritize finding some time to socialize. We could consider each of those priorities having a “quota” of sort.

Next steps

Based on all of this, what are my thoughts for moving forward? Well, I think there are two big things I want to work on, which I’ll likely turn into their own project on here:

Trying different techniques to improve my sleep, along with evaluating them and recording my subjective experience.
Work on a method to change how I use Youtube to make it healthier for me. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and think I’ll try to work on a browser extension. Stay tuned for more details.

I think these two things should help me a lot with tackling large projects such as my Challenges, by both limiting how much time I waste, and allowing me to feel more refreshed, motivated and focused. (And yes, the Youtube issue is also impacting my sleep). But that’s not where things end. I’ll also need to keep working on my physical health, which for now means going swimming weekly (hopefully eventually twice a week).

Finally, because I know that my stress is a big issue, I also will want to find ways to properly relax. One potential solution might be to look into meditation. And let’s not forget my mental health, which is also something I need to keep in check.

Conclusion

Thank you all for your patience and understanding. I’ll keep you updated on my progress and let you know what I learn from all of this. More updates to come in the future, so stay tuned!
Have a nice one, and take care of yourselves!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Three

Retrospecting on my Winter Term

This was written March 10, 2024, published March 24, 2024.

Introduction

Hello everyone,
as you likely already know, I’ve been studying Chinese in Taiwan for a few months now. And with the Winter Term ended roughly a week ago, and being a little underwhelmed with my performance, I figured I should retrospect. Note that I didn’t fail or get awful grades overall, but am still disappointed with some of the results, and feel like I haven’t learned or retained as much as I should have.

Ultimately, while it’s painful, there’s no point hiding from my shortcomings, and I should instead explore them to evaluate how I could improve moving forward. So here we go.
(Also, my apologies for the delays. I procrastinated on reviewing this article for a good two weeks.)

Retrospective

First and foremost, I think I struggled with a discipline issue. Unfortunately, this semester I had very few incentives to stay ahead and prepare. I think one of the biggest deterrents was that we had a chapter exam two days after finishing the material. Thus, I always felt like I should keep studying this material until after the exam, instead of preparing for the new chapter, even as we started it. For example, suppose we finished Chapter 1 on Monday, and had our exam on Wednesday. This meant that on either Monday or Tuesday, we would start Chapter 2, and during the second hour on Wednesday, continue with Chapter 2. However, I wouldn’t feel ready to start studying Chapter 2 until Wednesday after class, multiple days into the chapter. This means both that the first few classes going over a new chapter were inefficient for me (not being prepared), and that I fell behind and felt like I constantly had to catch up. The latter being further compounded by having been sick a few times in the semester, which meant missing material and having to recover. (On top of some classes missed for weaker reasons, which I’m not proud of, but it’s pointless to pretend it’s not the case).

On the topic of discipline, I also have a tendency to leave things to the last minute, causing sub-optimal results and poor long-term retention, due to both the lack of time, and added stress.

Another thing that caused me trouble was that I tried to do too many things at once. For example, I had December in Photography which I maintained throughout the month of December. I also tried to have a social life, and on top of that, I decided to join two classmates in trying to prepare for a “skip-level” exam, studying material meant for the next term. This last one was usually two 2h sessions each week, and unfortunately, this mostly caused extra (and unnecessary) stress and worries, but very little language gains.

Accordingly, I must admit I will have to learn to say no. And not just to others, but also to myself. Before accepting a new commitment, I should figure out how much it will impact me and its value, before evaluating whether it makes sense for me.

Another issue is that I haven’t properly reviewed the previous material as the term progressed, only waiting until the final exam for a proper review. But all of this extra vocabulary and grammar is generally useful, so I should really make efforts to practice it, not only for exams, but also language acquisition.

Next on the list, my mental health issues. Throughout the term, I had instances where it got particularly rough, feeding into my stress, and resulting in a vicious cycle. And this turned into inactivity, further making me fall behind and once again feeding this downward spiral.

Another unfortunate reality, I have a lot of trouble with sleep. This stems from two issues: Insomnia, and late-night procrastination. For some reason, I have a lot of trouble convincing myself to go to sleep, and instead idly waste my time. And having an early class forcing me to wake up at 6:30am made this matter a hell of a lot worse. And this also made me much more tired and less attentive in class.

Finally, while it has been a little helpful with my Chinese long-term, I think forcing myself, on a daily basis, to read a book that’s too advanced for me has been an impediment. It’s generally been mentally taxing, and also fairly time-consuming, sometimes requiring 2h for about 3 pages. And unsurprising, I feel fairly mentally drained by the end of it, meaning that studying my normal curriculum because even more arduous.

Lessons?

Based on all of this, what should I do to improve this semester? Well, first and former, I think I need to have more self-discipline. Having dictations daily is definitely going to at least help me not fall behind on the vocabulary. But beyond this, I should also make sure to stay ahead of the material, and maybe have a schedule in place, dictating by when I want to be done with what material. And obviously, learning to say know and limit my commitments will be invaluable.

I should also make sure to review previous material on a regular basis (both vocabulary and grammar). In terms of vocabulary, I think trying to transcribe (by hand) the dialogues through listening to the should be a good exercise, and a good way to identify what words I struggle with the most. As for the grammar, normal review, along with trying to use it during discussions, should be sufficient.

Next up, my busy schedule. One important thing will be to evaluate the actual value of a commitment before accepting it, or being willing to cancel it if its value becomes negative. I will also need to find a way to limit the impact of this blog on my studies. But this blog is a work in progress, and part of the experience is learning what works best for me, and sharing with you these attempts and my conclusion. So I’m convinced I’ll manage to figure something out.

Finally, my sleep, health and mental issues all have a significant impact on all of this. For the sleep, I will need to figure out how to limit the nightly distractions. Having a later class should definitely also help a bit, although I’m worried my days will in turn feel shorter. Beyond that, trying to get into more healthy habits like swimming should also be good. Otherwise, it’s a constant struggle that I’ll have to monitor, but it’s also nothing new to me.

Conclusion

And thus, a new semester begins. Last semester was a disappointment, but this one doesn’t have to be. I think reflecting on why I struggled and investigating potential area of improvements are important. Hopefully this new term goes a little better, but only time will tell.

Hope you have a nice one everyone, and keep on learning!

Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 23 (2024/03/16) – Dawn of a new Break

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.

Day 23 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Horizontal)

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.

Day 23 – Initial Guidelines (for measurements)

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:

Day 23 – Trying to fix the right leg (on the left). Result too thin

Day 23 – Another try to fix the right leg (on the left). Result better, but the shin still off on the outside.

Day 23 – Yet another attempt at fixing the right leg (on the left). The outer shin’s slope seems a little too abrupt, but still an improvement.

Day 23 – Final Outline. In retrospect, the previous attempt might have been better, but I think I just gave up at this point.

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”.

Day 23 – Final Drawing (With guidelines)

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

Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 22 (2024/03/15)

This was written March 15, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 0

Introduction

Hello and welcome back everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well. First of all, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that my credits dropped down to 0. Indeed, I made sure to hold onto that one credit because I knew yesterday was going to be very busy. Also having to pay off a sleep debt, I figured I should rest. But now I’m back at it!

This session started around 6:15pm, and I evaluated my tiredness at 6/10, better than the rest of the week. However, I must add that I’ve also been feeling very nervous and stressed, which should probably also be taken into consideration.

Exercises

Let’s start with the exercises. As of late, I’ve definitely been letting myself go with the lines exercise, using it mostly as a warm up. Today’s was rather sloppy, and I might have to make a conscious effort to improve these. Although it’s definitely not a priority at this point.

In contrast, I believe the wavy lines exercise went particularly well today, and it might be my best results yet. I’m happy with them, and feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it. In particular, I think the horizontal ones turned out pretty well.

Meanwhile, the circles were soso. I think I should definitely look up tips to draw better circles. Overall, the exercises took me about 5mins, which is incredibly short.

Day 22 – Wavy Lines Exercise (Horizontal)

Drawing

As I’ve mentioned last time, I decided to wait until I’ve translated the related pages before going back to the angled profile. Yet, I needed something short and a little simple today, especially with a time limit of about 40 minutes before the Cafe I was in closed. For this reason, I chose a frontal face in a new style, akin to chibi.

The first thing I drew were initial guidelines with rough measurements, making small ticks here and there to guide the head’s outline.

Next up, I drew the outline in the guideline layer. Of note, I struggled with line confidence today, with my lines being on the shaky side. This is generally especially true for longer lines (e.g.: outlines), but today felt particularly bad.

I also added extra guidelines for the eyes (unfortunately not quite parallel). The previous horizontal one should align with the “middle”,while the others with the top and bottom. Note that these eyes are particularly “bottom-heavy”.

With these guidelines ready, it was time to add a new layer and start drawing proper. In this style, the head’s outline wraps inwards toward the eyes, so I estimated where that would converge and marked a spot on each side. I then drew my curves. I once again struggled with this. Head outlines seem to be one of my biggest struggles, which luckily can be mitigated with later additions like hair (for non-bald characters). Thankfully, this is something I get to practice on most drawings. Though I may want to look up tips on consistency (both consistent results, and consistency between different elements). This is definitely a stage during which erasing and retrying is common practice for me.

Day 22 – Outline added (With guidelines)

With an outline sketched, I moved on to the eyes. I noticed that the eyes looked to be oval, with more “weight” towards the center of the face. Consequently, I made some rough ticks for the ovals’ axes, and tried to sketch them. This took multiple attempts, and adjustments to the aforementioned ticks.

With their outline ready, I moved my attention to outlining the iris. I eventually realized this should be taller than wide, while not touching the top of the existing oval, but merging with the bottom (top and bottom relative to the drawing). I then added eyebrows, ears, a smile, an upper body and clothes. In the future, I may want to check rough measurements for the mouth’s position. Also, the upper-body is just meant to be decorative, yet this is something I’ll need to practice through full-body sketches.

Day 22 – Face Elements added and refined

Next up, small shading for the eyes, along with reflection. I actually struggled with the shading, since it’s only a few lines, and I’m not fully understanding the theory behind them. But it seems like the orientation of those lines is of primordial importance. The reflection is also something I struggle a bit with: drawing the circle with the right width, and positioning it correctly.

The eye’s outline was itself also detailed. Do note that I erased the previous outline (which I commonly do during step). I also added some additional details such as a blush, and a line in the ears.

I was then distracted with trying to fix a few elements, such as the eye’s shading and reflection, and the jaw’s outline.

Finally, I moved on to the final details for the eyes, adding the iris, and darkening the rest of the eye (making the previous shading pointless). Once done, it was time to end the session, at roughly 39mins, 34mins of which were dedicated to the drawing. Here’s the final result:

Day 22 – Final Drawing (With Guidelines)

Conclusion

Looking at this drawing, here are a few of my thought:

I really need to work more on my face outlines, in particular making them “smoother” and with better line confidence.
In the future, I will need to work on some spacial positioning. The mouth seems a little off, and the eyes might be slightly too far apart. Yet, I think I’ve still improved a lot. While I’m unhappy with it here, this is still much better than some of my early work.
Below the neck is an area I really struggle with in general.

But overall, it’s not too bad for a first attempt at a different style. I also think it might have looked better had I added hair, and applied some additional fix-ups.

As for the stats, 39mins were spent on drawing, and 38mins on writing the post. Reviewing took me about 41mins, but good portions of it were either with adding the pictures (since I’m now doing this in a single batch) and fighting against WordPress (I generally hate tools that try to be smart and just change everything without your consent, but I’ll spare you a bigger rant). This means the article took roughly 79mins, and the session itself was a total of 118mins. Finally, drawing represented about a third of the session, and reviewing took just a little longer than writing the article.

On that note, have a lovely weekend everyone, come back next week for more!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 23 (2024/03/16) – Dawn of a new Break