Category: Drawing

This was written March 09, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

This was posted on Saturday, March 09 as a tribute to Akira Toriyama, and thus there won’t be any post on Monday, March 11.

Credits: 1

Introduction

Hello everyone,
Unfortunately, this session marks a sad event. I learned that Akira Toriyama, beloved and influential Mangaka, best known for his series Dragon Balls, along with character design for multiple video game series such as Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest, passed away earlier this month. For this reason, I decided to go off script and try something different: drawing one of his characters instead of following a lesson in a book.

I technically started on the next day, at 12:30am. However, I still count this as being done on March 8th (It’s my rules anyway). The session clocked at 1h50m (just shy of 2 hours) and my tiredness was estimated at a 7/10.

Exercises

For this session, considering I wanted to have a horizontal canvas, the exercises definitely felt different. However, for this one time, let’s quickly skip over the exercses and just state that I considered them a good warm-up. Here they are:

Drawing

For the drawing, I chose to draw one of Akira Toriyama’s most iconic characters, Goku. Thus, I searched for a picture of Goku, and landed on the following picture of adult Goku, which I would use as a template. I put this on my laptop for reference, took out my tablet and stylus, and got to work. Definitely don’t expect anything as good as this reference for my final result, haha.

After some consideration, the first thing I did was to draw angled lines as references for the face. These ended up being my only guidelines for this drawing.

Next, I tried to add the head’s outline, starting with the jaw. However, since I was really struggling, I instead added a nose and a mouth.

With these in place, it felt easier to gauge the head’s outline. Although once I started to sketch it, I realized that I might have started my drawing too high, and tried to move the sketch down with a moving tool. Unfortunately, I realized this only affected one layer at a time, and chose to fully commit to this. And while at first I tried to draw the ear popping out on the left side (as on the reference model), I ended up postponing this step, since I was struggling with dimensions.

I thus fully sketched the head’s outline. This was actually pretty rough, requiring plenty of rework. I struggled with each part: the jaw, the top of the head, the left side, the ear and it’s proportions. Even here, the ear looks pretty big. But looking at the reference model, I figured it was meant as a perspective trick, and would look better with details. Also, spoiler alert, but I eventually reworked chunks of this outline.

Since I was unconvinced about its size, I decided to next add details to the ear and see how it looked like. My biggest regret here is that the shading and the ear line don’t appear that distinct. Ideally, I should have either used a different type of “pen” for each, making the lines thicker and more distinctive, or even used a different color for the shading (like I’ll do with the hair). Still, I think the result isn’t too bad for a first attempt.

Next up, the eyes. This is another part that I reworked quite a few times, having trouble adjusting their positions, dimensions, and other quirks. Here are a few of the things I had to consider and redraw:

1. The direction each eye is looking into (directed by the black ellipses)
2. The “orientation” of the eye (the orientation of the black ellipse representing the iris and pupil)
3. The eyebrows’ placement, shape and orientation
4. The eye outline’s placement, alignment and dimensions (Controlling the position and size of each eye, accounting for depth and perspective)

Here are a few attempts I had:

Once satisfied with the eyes, I added the ear on the left (and adjusted the face’s outline) and drew the outline of the hair, along with a neck (which I wasn’t impressed with). Here’s the result, which I think isn’t that bad to be honest.

At this point, I thought the nose looked too heavy and messy, so I trimmed it down a bit.

Finally, I started inking (coloring shades). I started with the eyebrows, making them pitch black. One note: while it can be useful for fixing a line’s shape, making it more “continuous”, it can also be easy to go over the line and have to redo previous steps. For this reason, there are two “tricks” I use:

• I try to break this down into multiple strokes (Number of times I lift the stylus from the tablet). This way, if I have to undo a stroke, I don’t lose too much progress.
• I often start close to the edges with more care, and then fill in the centers more quickly, since I don’t have to worry about going over.

With the eyebrows inked, I took another look at the overall face, and was a little unhappy with the overall shape of the face. In retrospect, I think it’s a consequence of modifying the nose. Consequently, I changed the smile and jawline a bit. Looking back at it, I think I preferred how the initial jaw was a little more square, but overall, I’m still satisfied with this result.

Once this was done, I started shading the hair, doing multiple passes for the different shades. I first started with pure black. (I also ended up readjusting the jaw, since I thought it looked slightly too wide on the left side, going against the perspective). Overall, this phase of the shading went fairly well. I first drew contours and then added in the color, I just had to take my time. Here’s an intermediate stage with some contours for the inking, along with its completion. (Yes, I did change the hair a bit as I went along).

So, one obvious question is: Could I simply have used a bucket tool to fill, instead of manually inking? Obviously, yes, I could have. However, there are a few things to consider:

• As mentioned earlier, I do take this as an opportunity to refine the contour lines, which a simple fill wouldn’t do (Similarly, there could be “leaks” to deal with). However, I could in theory just fill in after reinforcing the contour.
• If part of my contour has small blanks in them, the bucket wouldn’t actually deal with it, so I might need to do another pass regardless.
• I actually find this process a little relaxing.
• The software I’m using is not that great, and definitely wasn’t designed for drawing (For example, I accidentally quit the app, and reopening the drawing took longer than expected, presumably because it’s not optimized for something like this). And when I last tried to use the bucket tool, it had some issues.

For my next shade, I wanted to try the same approach I’d used for the ear. Here’s an attempt of it (you can see it center top, towards the right). I was rather unhappy with this result, so I scratched it. Quick note: Doing a lot of small strokes is really annoying to undo, especially if you don’t want to spoil nearby elements. I couldn’t easily use the eraser tool here, which means I had to undo each of those scratch lines, one at a time due to the interface. This was quite a slow process.

So, what did I opt for? I switched to a shade of gray. I tried some variations of gray before landing on the one seen here. Overall, this step wasn’t too hard, especially since I figured I could adjust lines from either side in a cleanup phase. I also took this opportunity to update some of the darker shading.

Finally, I added one more shade to the hair, a lighter gray. Once again, this was straightforward.

The shading being done, I realized that part of the outline had been messed up. And looking at the template, I chose to keep the outline. Stylistically, it helps things “pop”. Thus, I reinforced the outline, and fixed some issues at the borders of the shades. The drawing could have benefited from more clean up, but I called it a day, since it was particularly late. Here is the final result:

Conclusion

Overall, I’m fairly happy with this experience. I went for something different and new, not working with a step-by-step guide, but instead going from a single reference image. Moreover, I worked with a side-angle, instead of either pure frontal or profile, which I have less practice with, and is more difficult (obviously, I’ll want to go back to the book and practice this some more in the future). What’s more, I also experimented with some basic coloring/shading, which I think adds a lot to the drawing! Obviously, I was working from a template, instead of having to figure out and understand the shading myself, but still, it gets me excited!

As for the result, I’m also happy with it. It’s by no means perfect, and nothing next to the reference model, but I think it’s fairly good all the same. Last year, I would never have expected to be able to make something of this caliber this early (It’s only day 18 after all). So you can count me happy.

Overall, the drawing session lasted around 1h50m, or 110mins. Meanwhile, writing the blog post took two session of 45m30s and 38m30s respectively, for a total of 84 minutes, with reviewing taking 50 minutes, for a total of 134mins spent on the blog post, and a full session of 244mins, or about 4h. As for ratios, drawing was about 45% of the session, writing 34.5% and reviewing 20.5%. And reviewing was about 37% of the time spent on the post.

Also, a quick reminder that since this is released this during the weekend, there won’t be a regular post on Monday. This is released “out of schedule” due to being a tribute.

As closing words, I would like to first remind you that everyone’s time on this planet is fleeting, and you should take a moment to reach out to and spend time with your loved ones and the ones you care about. I would also like to use this opportunity to remind you it’s not too late to pursue a passion. As an influential Mangaka, Akira Toriyama inspired countless other Mangaka, Writers, Animators, and even Youtubers. And inspiration is an important asset. Take a moment to think about what you would really, really want to learn or do, and take the first step required to pursue it.

Rest in Peace Akira Toriyama.

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 19 (2024/03/11)

This was written March 07, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 1

Introduction

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all doing well!
Today was a shorter session than usual, clocking at 39mins. What’s more, it was a distracted session, where I also tried to eat some food while drawing (this didn’t work out, so I opted to stop, focus on my drawing, and handle the food afterwards). Regardless, I tried something new and learned a few things.

Before getting into it, I started drawing around 5:30pm and evaluated my tiredness at 7/10 (I actually considered taking a nap instead of drawing). I’ve been particularly tired this week, in part from trying to keep up with both the blog and class while also having a social life. But I think it’s gradually getting better, so we’ll see. For what it’s worth, my tiredness partially dissipated as I progressed through the drawing. On that note, let’s get started.

Exercises

I think the line exercise was ok. There was still some slanting, but not as bad as it sometimes get. I did however have some wavering lines.

The wavy lines exercises wasn’t too bad. Honestly, the vertical ones lasted a few iteration before degenerating too much. Meanwhile, I failed right away with the horizontal ones, and opted for a “refresh”. Following this, I think I need to focus on the peaks and troughs. If I can focus on aligning those, instead of focusing on the distance, I might be able to maintain sinusoidal waves, as opposed to cycloids.

Finally, the circles exercise. It’s…not great. Line confidence is iffy, and a lot of those circles are not that round. I might want to look for a few tutorials on how to draw circles. Regardless, it’s still a good warmup.

Drawing

Today, I decided to try something completely new, and was a little out of my depths. All the same, I rose to the challenge and learned along the way.

This time, I went for an angled profile. The first phase was to set up a grid. In this case, we create the plane along which the character will stand, along with measurements. This looked like it was a one-point projection, so I figured I’d give it a go. Unfortunately, I had no experience with one-point projections, so it was no piece of cake. Especially since I opted against looking up tutorials at the time. For my point, I placed a pencil further down the table and planned to align my ruler with its tip. Accordingly, I looked along the ruler as if it were a sight, and when things were aligned, drew the new line. However, one of the issues was gauging the distance of successive lines. I think I’ll have to look up tutorials on one-point projection in the future. Regardless, here’s the grid I ended up with. Not too bad for a self-guided first attempt I’d say.

Next up, it was time to add a base: a separate plane to represent the ground. For some reasons, I initially thought I was supposed to have a perpendicular angle between its sides and the bottom line of the grid. I have no idea where this notion came from. Since the other sides should be parallel to it, this would mean the “perimeter” would have right angles, which shouldn’t be the case. You can see this failed attempt below.

After some fiddling, I got something that seemed reasonable. What worked for me was to add two lines parallel to the bottom line of the grid (since it should be aligned with the ground). Then, I simply connect both of these at an appropriate angle to represent how the grid is “perpendicular” with this plane. My example is not perfect, but it’s workable for now.

Afterwards, I drew a vertical spine. For the head, I was expected to draw a box to represent how to align it against the grid, but found it too difficult. So I opted (for now) to draw the two lines to represent the orientation of the face, and then draw the contour accordingly. I also added two feet, although I now realize I forgot to add a line to represent the midpoint between the feet, such that in the 3d space it’s perpendicular to the grid (“wall”). This would definitely have helped me align the feet correctly.

Then, the interesting bits, the body’s wire-frame. My first attempt wasn’t too great. I tried to start with the nodes, roughly based on their positions on the reference model.

I was displeased with the 3d positioning of the elements: the legs had the wrong angles (in relation to the torso and in relation to one-another), and the torso was too slanted. Here it is, annotated.

Back to the drawing board. Then, I had an epiphany: I was doing things backwards. I shouldn’t try to place the nodes first, and then create the segments from them. Indeed, the nodes are just specific positions on these segments, sometimes intersections between them. Instead, I should draw the segments first, and then add the nodes. This way, I would also able to align them as needed, while considering the 3d-space.

Thus, I started with the legs, drawing one starting from the foot at an angle I was happy with. Then I added the other leg, adjusting the angle based on the first leg. Once done, I adjusted their lengths and placed the nodes on their ends. Same thing for the torso’s vertical segments. Meanwhile, the horizontal ones simply connected existing nodes. Finally, I added the arms and the hands. However, I now realize I forgot the elbows and knees.

Conclusion

I’m fairly happy with this session, since I learned a lot, and started thinking a little more in three-dimensions. Speaking of, this whole exercise leads me to wonder whether 3d modeling might be easier than traditional drawing, since drawing still requires you to think about most of the 3d elements, before translating them on paper, while also simplifying some elements. Meanwhile, with the 3d models, you simply handle the 3d aspects directly, and can more easily handle fine adjustments/fixes.

Tangent aside, drawing took me 39 minutes overall, and writing the blog post was broken into two parts, 28 mins and about 25 mins, for a total of about 53 minutes. Reviewing took about 35 minutes, for a total of 88 minutes spent on the article. This means a total session of about 127 minutes, or just over two hours. The drawing took about 30% of that time, and reviewing was about 40% of the article preparation time.

Following this session, I was thinking it might be worth having my first sessions on new types of drawings focused on the first few steps. Since they’re more fundamental and core to the drawing, it seems like they should be practiced more. Therefore, instead of a first session where I try to go as far as possible with the drawing, maybe I would only draw core aspects, such as the wire-frame, but draw it multiple times. On top of offering more practice, it might also result in increased velocity. I’m curious about your thoughts on this, feel free to share in the comments.

With this, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! See you next week.

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 18 (2024/03/08) – Akira Toriyama Tribute

This was written March 06, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 1

Introduction

And onwards with day 16. Today, I didn’t need to “catch up” with my drawings, so it definitely felt better (Although due to trying Archery with friends, my review was on the next day. And yes, Archery was a blast!).

This time, I started at 3:30pm and drew in a library. I also evaluated my tiredness to be a 6/10. Not super tired, but surprisingly weary for the time.

Exercises

This time, the exercises took me roughly 6mins45s to complete. Not too bad. Once again, my horizontal lines we relatively contained, which is good. However, I definitely struggled with multiple lines, especially the diagonal ones. Meanwhile, the wavy lines were, as usual, a disaster. I seem unable to maintain continuity between waves, focusing on the movement, but not respecting the distance. This means gradual degeneration. But I’ll keep on practicing. As for the circles, they were soso. Spacing wasn’t great, and their shapes weren’t amazing.

Drawing

Now, for the pièce de résistance, the drawing. On this day, I opted to try a full-body sketch from the side. The step-by-step reference model was female, and it took me roughly 50 minutes to draw it. Here’s how it went.

I started with the guidelines used for dimensions and measurements (Unfortunately, they don’t look that straight). I then added a head and marks for the feet. While a very early step, I truly struggled with this angled head. First with gauging its size (its horizontal span), then the angle of curvature from the bottom of the jaw to the back of the head, and finally where the face should start curving towards the top. I redrew it a few times, and even tried to fix it later on. But as with many other things, I expect this will come with practice and experience…in other words, I’ll need to keep making such drawings.

Once this was done, I drew a rough spine guideline, the purpose of which is to help align the torso and the hips. I also found this difficult, redrawing it a few times. The spines I drew tended to be too curved. For reference, I have an example with torso and hips where I thought the spine was too curved.

As foreshadowed, next up came the torso and hips. In order to properly align them, extra guidelines extending down from the front and back of the head were added. Here, I mainly struggled with the torso. But I eventually realized the root of this was I wasn’t aligning the torso with the spine. I then knew to focus on this alignment, which helped a lot.

And thus, the guidelines are done. Time to work on the silhouette! Accordingly, I followed the contour of the guidelines, such as the torso and hips. I also added simple elements to the head/face. Nothing too complex, since the goal here is to focus on the body itself.

I did have some issues, but nothing major. The portions connecting the torso and the hips were redrawn a few times, but nothing dramatic. And once again, I found the legs challenging (although maybe less than on previous days). In particular, I still consider the knees and the thighs unintuitive.

For the next phase, I first added an arm. I then sketched a few details; refining muscles, limb intersections and the rib cage. There isn’t much worth mentioning here. I think things were fairly straightforward for me. The main thing that comes to mind is how the arm obscures part of the back, meaning some erasure.

Finally, the last phase consisted in deleting details from the previous phase, before adding clothes (and refining the feet). However, this time I appreciated the strokes added in the previous phase, since they helped guide the new elements.

Unfortunately, I struggled a bit with the foot, leading to a disappointing the result. Beyond that, the element that gave me the most trouble were the bottom underwear. Somehow, I struggled with getting the right curves, and connecting the leg and the belly. Here’s the final result:

Conclusion

This was definitely a new kind of challenge. And while there are definitely some elements I could improve, I think the result is reasonable and am generally happy with the proportions and angles, along with how different elements are connected. And while I’ll definitely want to keep practicing, I think this is a reasonable start.

Moreover, I believe I better understand how the joints and muscles function in such drawings. Unfortunately, it’s hard to properly describe in words, since it’s partially intuition. And despite my wishes, intuition tends to be hard to describe, needing to be built gradually (and personally), with practice and exposure as its foundations. And while, initially, intuition for creation might be missing, I believe the intuition for what looks correct or not tends to already be present, which can serve as an initial guiding star.

The drawing session lasted 56 mins. Meanwhile, my writing session was around 40 mins, with a review process of 45mins (split into two sessions, the first of about 10 minutes). This means a total of around 140mins, 85mins of which spent on the blog post. This means a ratio of about 2:3 of drawing to blog post, and just a little more time spent on reviewing vs writing. The last one in part due to postponing some decisions from the writing stage to the reviewing stage (vocabulary, phrasing, etc…). Overall, not too bad, just under 2h30mins, instead of 3h, which is more manageable.

And so, another session comes to a close. Thanks for joining and take care!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 17 (2024/03/07)

This was written March 05, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 1

Introduction

Hello everyone, and welcome. As stated on the previous day, considering how busy I am, I need to get back on track. Thus, I decided to go for a shorter session: I limited myself to 30 minutes (Ending a bit early at 29m15s). Also, I did jot down that I started at 8:50pm, and evaluated my tiredness to be a 7/10 (An arbitrary measure that might evolve over time). Will I ever use these stats? Who knows!

Exercises

To kick things off: the exercises. Once again, I suffered from the “slanted effect”, but it’s manageable. In spite of that, my horizontal lines took less space than usual. Meanwhile, the wavy lines were a complete disaster. Admittedly, I dealt with some friction issues, with my forearms and desk sticking to each other, resulting in unpleasantness and annoyance. Overall, the exercises took about 7m45s…although I did use some of that time to evaluate my tiredness.

Drawing

But with such a limited time-constraint, what did I decide to draw? I opted to to revisit ears. I ended up getting some good practice in: 9 ears overall. I also learned a few things. Here’s the first ear I drew, with two arrows for annotations. I was displeased with two things: the placement of the ear canal’s area, and the top of the lobe.

Now is probably a good time to take a step back and explain the steps involved in these drawing. Let’s demonstrate it with the second ear. First of all, I drew the ear’s outer outline. I eventually realized that I get better results if I split this in two parts. First the top half, from top left to center right. Next, the bottom right, from bottom left to center right (this is my personal stroke preference, it might differ for others).

I then add the ear canal and associated lines.

Next, I add the inner outline.

I follow this up by connecting the ear canal area to the inner outline:

Finally, the inner outline loops around to connect back to the previous line:

Before getting into the remaining attempts, a few things I’ve realized through this repeated exercise:

• As stated before, splitting the outer outline into two parts helps me get a better overall shape.
• The ear lobe doesn’t need to immediately drop down, nor drop that much.
• While drawing the inner outline, I got better results keeping the top-right corner further away from the outer outline.
• For the ear-canal area, aligning the top to be roughly in the center of the section connecting the ear to the head helps with positioning. The canal should also remain close to the head, and not towards the center of the ear.
• It’s ok to make adjustments later on.

But regardless, there exists a huge variety of ears, so there is no “perfect ear” to replicate. The only point of contention would be maintaining consistency between drawings of the same character.

Let’s now look at the remaining ears and comment on them. Here’s the third ear. I have two complaints. First, the part below the ear canal is too curved and goes out too much. Second, the lobe drops too much while also getting too close to the ear canal.

The fourth ear had a similar concern with the section below the ear canal. I also feel like the outer outline and both inner outlines all get too close.

For the fifth ear, I think the ear canal area is a little too cramped, but otherwise, it’s not too bad.

For the sixth ear, I have small reservations about the distance between the lobe and the ear canal, but overall, I think it’s fairly good.

Meanwhile, I think I made the seventh ear a little wide.

I don’t have much to say about the eighth ear, I think it might be my favorite of the bunch.

And finally, the ninth ear. This one I had some orientation and positional issues.

Before moving on, keep in mind that my complaints are in reference to the reference model I used. Overall, I think a lot of those ears are fine.

Now, a quick look at the whole sheet with all 9 ears (and little annotation arrows on them).

Finally, before calling it a day, some stats I’ve been curious about. Here is, in order, how long each ear took me to sketch: 1m15s, 1m50s, 1m50s, 1m25s, 2mins, 1m25s, 2m55s, 1m05s, 50s. Overall, this is a rather quick process, so it’s possible to get a lot of practice in!

Conclusion

So, what is the outcome of today’s practice? Well, I think I can now approach ear drawings a little differently and understand them a little better. I also now realize that some of these things can be practiced fairly quickly. Although it must be said this is unobscured ears, from a specific angle, with a specific level of details.

A silly note, but if I revisit this, I will definitely want to take a look at ear anatomy, if for nothing else than using better nomenclature. Continuously describing areas using vague terms definitely feels off.

As for the time spent, I spent 29m15s on drawing, while spending 53mins on writing the blog (In part from having to capture so many images and upload them), and 28 mins on reviewing it. This means a total of 81mins on the blog post, and about 110mins overall. Meanwhile, the drawing to blog post ration is close to 1:3, and a writing to reviewing ration of roughly 1:1.9.

On that note, I’m glad to have finally caught up, and think the rest of the week should feel a little less stressful. Thanks for joining and have a lovely one everyone!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 16 (2024/03/06)

This was drawn March 04 (I started right before midnight, so it counts!), but written March 05, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 1

Introduction

Hello there, and thanks for coming along. To start with, I once again ended up drawing and writing on different days (thus, I technically only save up half a credit, haha), due to classes resuming, and having fairly busy day (it also looks like it’ll be a busy week). But here I am writing this article in a coffee shop, while listening to music with a tea pot next to me. Without further ado, here’s how my 14th day went.

Exercises

As always, we start with the exercises. Once again, those went fairly quickly, clocking at just under 7 minutes, seemingly the new norm. For a normal session, that’s pretty good (although for a shorter session of around 30 minutes, it would consume a good chunk of the available time).

This once, I struggled a bit more than usual with my strokes. I’m left to wonder if there might be a correlation with my alertness, since I was rather exhausted at this point. In particular, the wavy lines were rough, some of them looking less like sinusoidal waves and more like cycloids. I’m left wondering if I should track how tired I am each session to see its impact, possibly by recording the time at which I start and an estimate from 1-10 of how tired I feel. But definitely not a priority.

Generally, I had a “global alignment” issue. For example, in the lines exercise, individual strokes might be generally fine, but the rows themselves are definitely slanted. Regardless, here are the results:

Drawing

As promised, I opted to try to draw the full-body male reference model. As on the previous day, this started with a wire-frame. To avoid confusion between guidelines and drawing, I opted for a different guideline color. But while it looked reasonable on my tablet… I think it looks a bit aggressive on the computer.

The first thing I did was to draw 8 equally spaced horizontal line. Then I added a rough head shape, along with hips. Remember the warning I gave the previous day about errors doubling if you count each side separately? Well, I almost fell for a similar issue, where the hips would have been twice as long as intended (Counting the required distance on each side, as opposed to total). Luckily, I noticed it and fixed it right away.

I then added the shoulders and connected them to the hips to complete the torso. I did mention yesterday I would get back to this: the male and female torsos differ noticeably. The female torso is rectangular, with hips the same length as the shoulder. Meanwhile, the male torso is a trapezoid, with shoulders slightly wider than the hips. Here is the wire-frame at this stage:

Next came the arms and legs. For the arms, I tried to make their angle the same as that of the torso (i.e.: incrementing the horizontal distance by the same amount). Meanwhile, the knees are slightly closer to the center, with the feet directly below them.

Next up were the finishing touches for the wire-frame, mainly adding guidelines for the chest and hips. For some reasons, I struggled with the chest guidelines. First, my two lines were initially noticeably asymmetric, messing up the proportions and alignments. But even once that was fixed, I had difficulties with the semi-circle portion. I both struggled with properly placing its apex, and drawing a proper circular shape, often drawing shaky lines (Likely due to how late I drew).

Here’s the completed wire-frame. Overall, the full wire-frame took me about 13 minutes. Not bad at all.

At this point, it was time to start the actual drawing. The first step was to draw the outline by adding limbs around the nodes and guidelines: A head and neck, two arms, two legs, and a torso (including a crotch outline). But I didn’t simply draw them out-of-order and disconnected. Instead, I “continuously” drew the outline counter-clockwise, starting top-left, continuing in the bottom, and finishing top-right.

Once again, I really struggled with legs, redrawing them multiple times. Moreover, the hips are a little off at this point. However, I did end up fixing some issues later on. Meanwhile, while it might be a bit silly (especially when following reference drawings), I was really happy and almost proud with how part of the arm on the left came out. In particular, I’m really happy with the section between the bicep and the shoulder, where it looks like the outline of the muscle is present.

Now, to add some initial details. I started with the face and the hair, before moving on to muscles and other strokes on the skin. I also took this opportunity to readjust a few things I was unhappy with, generally from top to bottom. Thus, I reworked the neck and shoulders a bit before adding strokes in the chest area.

Speaking of the chest, I struggled a bit with the pectoral muscles, sometimes making them look more like breasts. There are two culprits here:

• I initially had issues gauging the stroke on the outer-part of the chest, sometimes connecting it to the armpit, instead of being more parallel to the body.
• The bottom of it was sometimes too curved, or at a wrong angle.

(The next image still fell for those pitfalls).

I then added the abdominal muscles and refined the crotch a little bit. This area was also a bit rough for me initially, trying not to make it look like a “beer belly”. But I think it’s about the orientation of the curves, which I initially made curve too much towards the outside.

I also added some strokes to the arms, before moving on to the legs. Here, I truly struggled. There’s just something about legs (including feet) at this angle that I find unintuitive. At this point, I spent a good 15 minutes just on the legs and feet, redrawing them many times. However, I did figure some stuff out, which I’ll need to work on. With the knee lines in place, and actively being conscious about it, I realized the leg should ever so slightly curve around the knee (However, this is not properly applied here). I also started to better understand how the calves actually curve on the leg, which is a little tricky.

Ultimately, I believe most of my issues issues here revolve around needing to think more about the anatomy, as opposed to considering the leg as a whole and thinking in terms of strokes.

Here is what things looked like once this phase was complete:

Finally, I was ready for the final phase: improving the hair and face, removing a lot of the muscles/joints strokes, to be replaced by sparser and finer ones, and adding underwear. I also fixed a few sections. And while I struggled a bit with the nose, I came to a realization. While I envisioned it as vertical line with a “spot” for the tip of the nose, I eventually realized the tip should instead be separate stroke at a different angle, with thickness representing the shading. I also tried to fix the hands a bit, before realizing I’d been drawing for nearly 90 minutes and should probably head to bed (It was close to 1:30am). But I was so focused that I didn’t see time pass by. And I must say, this is something I enjoy about such projects, being able to fully devote myself to something, completely losing myself to a task, oblivious to the passing of time.

And so, here is the final result:

Conclusion

I must say, I’m really happy with this drawing. It definitely has its flaws, but I think it’s already a significant improvement over the previous day. Moreover, I’ve gained a better understanding of some necessary concepts, along with a clearer notion of what to focus on. I consider this a successful day!

As for the statistics, I spent about 85 minutes drawing, roughly 75 minutes to write and 55 minutes reviewing, split up into two parts, 37mins and 18mins. This means a total of 130 minutes devoted to writing the article, and 215 minutes of total time. The drawing to article ratio is close to 1:2, and the writing to review ratio is 15:11 (roughly 3:2).

Once again, I really regret drawing and writing on different days, since it really feels like I’m continuously lagging behind. Which is especially painful when also having to keep up with other stuff. Thus, for my next day, I plan to spend less time drawing (maybe timeboxing to 30-45 minutes) and then writing right away. I’ll let you know tomorrow how that went.

Thank you for joining, and I hope you appreciated this post. Have a wonderful day!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 15 (2024/03/05)

This was drawn March 03, but written March 04, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Credits: 1

Introduction

So, first and former, as explained in Learning to Draw People Challenge – Take Two, I am now taking my weekends off, but with the option to draw as a bonus credit if I want to, which I opted to do this Sunday (Hence the note that I have 1 Credit). The posting schedule will remain the same, Monday through Friday, so this Sunday drawing is coming out on Monday. And I can spend this bonus credit if I want/need to skip a day. However, I will still try to avoid using those whenever possible (I shouldn’t use one simply out of laziness!).

Unfortunately, while I did draw on Sunday, I did not manage to write the blog post on Sunday, instead writing it on Monday. Having forgotten a cable to transfer my drawing and video to my computer, I couldn’t fully write the post. Regardless, here’s how the session went.

Exercises

First of all, as usual, I started with the exercises. I don’t have a whole lot to say about them, but I do feel like I’ve been gaining more line confidence. It might be worth eventually seeing whether there is an appreciable difference. As for “technique”, I did start to reposition my hand between each strokes, and I think it does help with both result and hand comfort (avoiding hand cramps).

While I believe I’ve been improving with the wavy lines exercise, one major annoyance remains: the compounding effect of mistakes. They get amplified with each step, and each progressive line becomes harder to complete and more muddled. However, I think that might be a good thing in terms of practice, since it forces each line to be done more accurately in order to have a reasonable final result.

Finally, regarding the circles exercise, I feel like I’ve definitely improved when it comes to the clockwise orientation, which was basically alien to my hand at the very start. It’s by no means perfect, but it’s improving nonetheless.

Here are the results, which overall took me roughly 6m45s (They’re definitely less time consuming than they used to be):

Drawing

Let us now get to the drawing portion. While I still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to drawing heads and faces, I opted to practice a full-body sketch to change things up a bit. Thus, I turned to the body section of my book, and started going through the steps highlighted in the first exercise.

The first step was to create guidelines. 8 lines overall with equal distance between each successive one. Note that in the book, the vertical line stopped along the final horizontal line, but I figured it wasn’t necessary, since it would be discarded anyway (Which I still agree with). But I do regret not having the right implements to draw parallel lines (e.g.: two triangle protractors).

Next, I started to wire-frame the character with guidelines. Starting with an oval for the head and a horizontal line and two circles for the hips. This horizontal line goes at the very center of our reference lines, i.e.: between lines 3 and 4. I did try to eye-gauge the width of the hips, which ended up wider than on the reference model. However, I don’t consider that an issue (Although it did mean having to adapt different elements accordingly, and following the reference less faithfully). Though do keep in mind that if you’re taking measurements for each side, instead of for the entire length, any discrepancy will be doubled. so the proportions between the height and the width can change fairly quickly. (Thus, it might be preferable to attempt to get the desired length and try to adjust the center, instead of measuring from the center twice).

Once that was done, I finished the torso’s frame. I added an extra line at the correct height (halfway between lines 1 and 2), and made sure the circles for the shoulders lined up with the hips’, as per the reference. The female reference showed hips and shoulders aligning perfectly. (More on this on the next day, where I sketch the male model).

If you haven’t noticed yet, the circles on these drawings are meant to represent important “nodes”, to help align everything. These nodes are at the intersections of different members (e.g.: hips and thigh, upper arm and forearm, etc…), and thus joints will usually be represented.

Next up, it was time to add legs and arms. In this case, the arms are fully extended. To draw them, I aligned the wrist nodes to be slightly away from the hips, and then connected them to the shoulders. In contrast, the knees are further inwards, close to the center, with the ankles aligned directly below them. I also sketched some small feet.

It was at this stage that I truly noticed that the horizontal proportions were different from my reference model, presumably because there were enough elements present to intuit all the proportions at a glance.

Finally, I added the last few components to the wire-frame guidelines. I added two circles for the elbows, lines for the chest proportions, and adapted the hips to better show leg alignment, and even sketched tiny hands. Also, discontented with the head’s outline, I redrew it. At this point, all proportions were gauged by eye.

I reached this step at roughly the 23mins mark (Which means after drawing for about 16 minutes). Overall, I think it’s not bad at all. (Especially when contrasted to writing this blog post, where it took me 42mins to reach this point, haha. Though admittedly, there are a lot of new elements I wanted to explain, and a few bottlenecks with my blogging process.)

So, with the wire-frame guidelines, what’s next? To use those guidelines to sketch the profile of the person. For this purpose, I first created a new layer to my drawing and switched my pen color to black (instead of the green I use for guidelines). Unfortunately, with such involved guidelines, I noticed an issue with the colors chosen on my tablet. While the contrast between this green and black is reasonable on a computer, it wasn’t so on my e-ink tablet, and sometimes it was difficult to distinguish guidelines from drawing. But that’s simply something I’ll adjust in the future for quality of life.

In order to draw the actual outline, I simply connected things along the nodes. For the arm, I go from shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist, etc.. One of the complications I had here was the torso area. First, this doesn’t actually follow the nodes anymore, but other guidelines instead. Moreover, I had trouble separating arm from torso, since they are in close proximity.

The legs were also a little harder to handle, and the way I drew them gives the illusion that one is behind the other (Which I leaned into later on, or more accurately, tried to respect). For some reasons, I also struggled a bit with the head’s outline. More practice will definitely be warranted in order to gradually build my intuition. Here is the outline with and without the guidelines at this step:

Once the outline was in place, I first tried to sketch the breasts, as shown in the reference model. However, I was struggling with it, and it somehow felt a little wrong, so I opted to revisit it later. Thus, I tried to sketch some lines for joints and muscles. Conceptually, this was not that easy for me, and I’ll need to analyze this to better understand the necessary proportions and alignments.

I then added some hair and initial details to the face, along with a wrist and thumb. At this stage, the character is starting to come together, but multiple elements still feel off. (My apologies, I didn’t have a version of this without guidelines).

Once done, I revisited the breasts, sketching their outline. (While this is a little irrational, this made me feel really uncomfortable, especially while drawing in a Cafe). I also smoothed out the torso/hips area, and changed a few lines along the body.

Finally, we’re reaching the final stretch. I completed the swimsuit and reworked a few elements (such as the arms, legs, and parts of the face). I also removed the muscles/joints lines, as per the reference. (I’m not sure why they were added before being removed, but will definitely need to read/translate that section to better understand. I’m guessing it’s to help understand the anatomy and the placement of different components along the outline).

Finally, I worked on the hair and the jawline. Overall, I spent around 16 minutes on this. I was struggling with a few facetss of the hair, such as hair coming from behind other hair. But also, I still generally struggle with figuring out what the crucial lines should be, and how to add lines that aren’t a strand’s outline.

Here is the final result, with and without guidelines.

Conclusion

Overall, I know this drawing is far from perfect, but I’m generally happy with it. As a first attempt at a full-body drawing, I think it’s more than reasonable. The head isn’t fully detailed, but it’s still decent, especially considering that’s not the point of this exercise. I also think the proportions are generally fine. However, the drawing does look a little stiff. I also will need to figure out how to be more comfortable with drawing certain…aspects of it. As of the weakest component, I would say it’s the legs. There’s a long way ahead, but I think this is a good place to start.

I should note that I’m very surprised with how quickly drawing the wire-frame guidelines went. Especially with how important and involved they are. Moreover, I’m sure it’s going to get faster as I practice. Verdict: I see a lot of value in them, and think it would be unreasonable to skip them any time soon.

This whole session was definitely different from anything I’ve done before, but I think it was interesting, and refreshing. I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads me and how much I learn and improve over time. For the next day, the plan is to also go for a body sketch, but this time the male model.

Now, for the meta notes. As stated, drawing took me roughly 70 minutes. Meanwhile, writing this post took me approximately 85 minutes. The review process in turn took me about 55 minutes, for a total of around 210 minutes (3h30m). The drawing to blog writing/reviewing ratio is about 1:2, while the writing to reviewing ratio is roughly 3:2. I think one of the reasons why it took me so much time to write is because this is a new type of drawing and I had a lot of things to learn, and explain. There’s also more “individual” steps to highlight along the way. I expect that after a few sessions of exploring this topic, I’ll be able to go over these more quickly. Definitely a huge time investment here, with a lot more time spent on retrospection than actual action. With school resuming on Tuesday, I’m a little worried about how much time this might take me, but we’ll see. Let’s take it one step at a time.

Unfortunately, drawing and posting on different days was a pain, which I’ll want to avoid in the future. It’s not so much that I don’t remember what I drew and how it went, as much as having a tax to pay during the following day. However, I do think it’s good that I prioritized writing this before focusing on the next day’s drawing. This is an important step of my new process that should prevent me from getting behind like last time, while also forcing me to reflect on the previous drawing before moving on.

Regardless, this is a significant new step along this journey, which I’m happy to be taking. I hope you enjoyed this new exploration! Thanks for your time, and take care everyone!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 14 (2024/03/04)

This was written March 04, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Yesterday, while I was walking around, I suddenly started thinking about all the things encompassed in a drawing, and what lays ahead of me in terms of learning to draw. Once I got to a cafe, I decided to take out my tablet and write some of those elements. I figured it might be a good idea to get a notion of what’s ahead and what I’ll eventually want to focus on. Here’s roughly what I noted, divided into sections, in no particular order. Note that this is not an exhaustive list and that is specifically related to drawing characters:

• Head/Face:
  • Basic with accurate proportions and positions
  • Different Angles
  • Hair
  • Eyes
  • Ears
  • Mouth
  • Nose
  • Varieties (E.g.: different styles of hair, nose, mouth, eyes, ears, shapes, weight, etc..)
• Body:
  • Basic with accurate proportions and positions
  • Different angles
  • Hands
  • Feet
  • Different poses
  • Varieties (different sizes/ages, weight, muscularity, etc..)
• Misc:
  • Clothing and accessories
  • Shading
  • Coloring
  • Motion
  • Depth
  • Interactions with other people, objects or environment

So, taking a quick glance at this, it immediately feels daunting and overwhelming (At least to me). But that’s exactly the point of this post. While it’s useful to gauge these items to get a sense of what to work on, it’s important to not get bogged down by the details, and fall down a rabbit hole, or have your motivation wane. I could just focus on how long it could possibly take me to go through all of this, and whether it’s even worth it. But ultimately, my skills are still at their infancy, and getting good at a skill (let alone mastering it) requires a lot of time and effort. Thus, it’s important to take it one step at a time. Here is a related Youtube short that I think illustrates how to approach this well. (Note that it’s related to game development)

Moreover, while there are a lot of elements on this list, a lot of which include many different aspects (further branching out), it’s important to note that working on some of those will help build fundamentals that in turn help improve others. A lot of these are connected and interrelated. For example, working on different angles will help get a better understanding of 3d positioning and depth, which in turn should help with a few other elements on this list, such as poses. Moreover, working on more “global” elements, I get to practice smaller elements. For instance, while working on a head portrait, I already get some practice on the hair, ears and eyes. Similarly, while working on a full-body portrait, I get some practice on the hands, feet and even the head and its elements. However, I think having deep-dives are still valuable to better understand these element and improve these different aspects.

On that note, learning something is never easy, and usually requires a lot of time and effort. Yet, I think it still tends to be rewarding. I know for a fact I’m currently enjoying seeing my progress and am relatively proud of it, even if I definitely struggle from time to time. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by all the steps needed, just immediately start somewhere. There is no point waiting for the perfect time, since it’ll never come (I’ve been patiently “preparing” this kind of challenge and recording of the process for years, and I regret not just starting right away). Also, continuous practice goes a long way. If there’s something you’ve been meaning to try your hand at for a while, I urge you to just step away from the computer, take a deep breath, and take the first steps towards it. Feel free to share here afterwards!

And have a nice one everyone!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 13 (2024/03/03)

This was written March 01, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Introduction

Hello everyone and happy March! Today marks the end of my first week back (Reminder that I’m only planning to draw Monday through Friday now, as explained here). Unfortunately, today was a bit underwhelming. I started my session while extremely tired and under the weather, yet decided to undertake something challenging…while also cutting some corners. Definitely not a recipe for success. Thus, today will be a quick one.

Exercises

Nothing much to say about the exercises, other than I somewhat rushed through them. Still a good warm up, but not the best of results. All the same, they took me about 6m30s, which is shorter than usual. Here they are if you want to see them:

Drawing

Today, I decided to go for an angled profile. I started by drawing the contour with some guidelines. However, I also cut corners and skipped a few of the guidelines, along with the neck’s cross-section.

Once that was done, I placed some eye holes, eyebrows, a nose and a mouth. Unfortunately, I believe that my eyes are a little too low here. Also, the eye on the left should be at a different angle, to account for the face’s angle.

Next, I took the first step to refine the eyes, and redrew the cranium, to try to account for poor placement of the eyes.

For the next step, I added an ear with some detail, and also opted to modify the placement of the nose and mouth. Overall, I’m not too disappointed by the ear, I think it might be the best aspect of this drawing.

As my last step for the face today, I refined the eyes further, and added a blush. There was a lot of erasing and redrawing for the eyes, especially the one on the left. And even then, I’m still unhappy with them. Their placement and proportions feel a little off. I definitely need to spend more time working on this in the future. This different angle is something I need to better understand.

Finally, I added outlines for the hair. Here is the final result.

Conclusion

Overall, I think it’s a disappointing result, likely due to a combination of my tired state and rushing through things (i.e.: cutting corners), while working on a more complex task than usual. This kind of angle is definitely less intuitive, and something I need to better study.

Beyond that, I’m glad I still managed to put something out today. Overall, this means I successfully drew and wrote a blog post every day this week, which has been the primary goal here. Thus, even though the week may have ended in a whimper, it was still successful, so I’ll take that as a victory! On that note, I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and a great month of March. See you next week.

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Interlude

This was written February 29, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge

Introduction

Happy end of the month everyone, with the elusive February the 29th. Today, as stated in yesterday’s post, was a long day since I went on a field trip. Thus, I started drawing fairly late, while also exhausted. But I still went through with it, and am also writing this post!

Before getting into it, a silly note. While on the bus, I decided to try to read/translate a few lines from the (Chinese) drawing book I’m using as a reference…and there’s definitely a lot of value I’m losing by following visually and not reading. I will need to spend some time reading it.

Exercises

For the exercises, there isn’t much to say. Mainly two realizations:

• When drawing multiple strokes in a row, I tend to leave my hand in place, only changing my wrist’s position slightly. This means I often end up in a very cramped position. After realizing this, I decided to try to move my arm after most strokes, and I think this was a little better. My hand wasn’t feeling as cramped as usual after the exercises.
• While handling the wavy lines, I also realized I could move my whole arm, instead of just my wrist and my forearm. This means I raised my hand and arm, and let the stylus glide over the tablet. I suspect that might be what I did yesterday which led to that motion that felt so fluent. I also opted to use that technique for some of the larger circles, and tried it with a few strokes in the actual drawing. I think this has potential, though I might also need to explore it with different grips.

Beyond that, I still think these exercises are a great warm up, and I think there are a few areas in which I’m improving. It might be worth eventually looking back and comparing the progress here. Overall, it took me roughly 10 minutes to complete the exercises. Here are the results:

Drawing

Today, I opted to revisit the profile angle. I started with some guidelines, as usual:

Once this was done, I continued with the front of the profile (nose, mouth and jaw). I also added a neck and redrew the “cranium”, following the guideline. It has a few flaws, but I think it’s not so bad. Plus, it’s just a temporary fixture. There two components I struggled with the most. First, the bridge of the nose (roughly where the eye sockets should be), often making it too deep. Then there’s also the chin, which I often draw too blocky. You can see the result so far with and without guidelines:

Next up, I added some guidelines for the eye. I drew a line from the neck to roughly where the eye should be, and added a circle for the eye. (No, it is not a monocle)

Once the guidelines were ready, I drew the eye’s outline, making sure to align it with the top of the nose this time. I also added an eyebrow and a smile. Being unhappy with the chin, I redrew it along with the jaw before adding the ear’s outline (since I wanted them to align properly). Here it is with and without the guidelines.

The next step was to add in the inner outline for the ear, and some details for the eye. I once again struggled with the ear.

Finally, the last details for the face were added: some highlights around the eye, a thicker eyebrow, and a more detailed ear. Also some plastic surgery, redrawing the jawline and the nose. I’m fairly happy with the image at this point, I also think it might be my best ear so far.

If we compare this to the drawing I had on Monday (Day 08), I think it’s much better:

Next, there were a few steps to handle for the hair, which I opted to draw this time. First, a general outline:

Once that was done, I tried to add details for the hair, with different strands here and there. Though I once again struggled with the hair conceptually: what should be drawn where and in which orientation?

I then removed the cranium line and started trying to modify the hair a little. I noticed that the book, for some reason, removed some hair at this stage. I definitely struggled to better understand that. Here’s an intermediate stage I had, before refining it some more. Note that the back of the head was changed a bit, since I wasn’t convinced with its shape. The shape definitely appears smoother.

Ultimately, I learned a few things about drawing hair today:

• Less is more. Having less detail and focusing on specific areas lends itself to better results.
• Working on hair orientation is definitely important. Trying to make it flow “naturally” goes a long way, although I haven’t mastered this yet.
• Having smooth strokes seems especially important for hair.

The drawing is not perfect by any means, but I think it’s my best so far, and I’m really happy with my progress. Here it is:

Conclusion

Overall, I think I’ve definitely made observable progress, and I’m ecstatic about it! I’m also glad that I’ve managed for the past two days to both draw and write my posts, despite being tired and exhausted. I think that’s the extremely valuable if I want to make this a long-term habit. As for the time spent on this, I spent around 90 minutes on drawing (10 minutes of exercises and one hour of drawing). Writing this post took me roughly 50 minutes, and reviewing it took about 25 minutes (a 2:1 ratio, definitely better than yesterday in terms of proportions). Overall, this is a huge time commitment at a total of 2h45mins (And that’s just drawing and writing, it doesn’t include transferring files, publishing the post and relevant updates, etc…). I’ll need to find a way to shorten it a bit by the time classes resume next week. But one step at a time.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post. Thank you for joining me and following my progress. Stay tuned to see how far I can get, and what other things I learn along the way!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 12 (2024/03/01)

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

Introduction

Since I got home a little late, and tomorrow I’ll be leaving early to go on a field trip, I opted for a shorter session. This time, I decided to pick things up where I dropped the ball last time, practicing eyes. Thus, I prepared my book and tablet, got a mug of water, and started to play some music.

Exercises

For the line exercise, I ended up realizing that for the “overhand” technique, the hand obscures what’s above (in retrospect, this is obvious), which means it can mess up spacing and flow. Otherwise, an unexpected result is that the “overhand” technique seems to result (for me) in thinner lines. The results of this exercise are soso, but still serve as a good primer.

For the wavy line exercise, I opted to go more slowly for the first line, and it seems to have been a little better. I then opted to go a little more slowly generally, and think I felt a more natural “flow” of the stylus against the tablet, almost as if the stylus were guiding me. Unfortunately, it’s hard to properly explain, but I think it helped a bit. Overall, the results are soso, but I think they’re still superior to previous days.

Finally, for the circles exercise I decided to try to go a little more slowly at first, but I’m not sure how much it helped. I also decided to go for a new type of exercise, where I increased the size of the circle with each new row. I think this could be useful, since it makes me practice different kinds of arcs, making this exercise more versatile.

Overall the exercises took 10 minutes, which ate a significant chunk of the 30 minutes I ended up being able to use.

Drawing

For the drawing, I ended up only using 20 minutes. I would have preferred to use more time, and sketch multiple sets of eyes, but ended up being short on time.

I flipped through the pages until I found the section on eyes. Once found, I decided to follow the steps highlighted there. It went as follows:

1. Sketch a rough outline of the eyebrows, eye and iris. In retrospect, I really should have changed my pen mode to a thinner one. The lines I made here were way too thick. I also ended up erasing and redrawing the eye outline multiple times, not so much because I was struggling with drawing “satisfactory” circles (I feel like I definitely improved on that front), but because the symmetry kept being way off. The result I kept is still a little off, mostly unaligned along the vertical axis.



2. Once this was done, it was time to add eye lashes and volume in that area.



3. The next step was to add some details with the iris and light reflection.



4. Next up was removing part of the outline and changing the bottom of the eyes a little bit.



5. Afterwards, in a blink and you’ll miss it moment, I added a fold above each eye.



6. Finally, I thickened the eyebrows and added shading to the eye. With this portion, I learned that using an e-ink tablet can be very annoying, since what I see can stop reflecting the actual results (E.g.: seeing blank spots when there should be ink, or vice versa), requiring a refresh (This is because the pen can physically pull e-ink in either direction, without it being reflected in software). The other thing I found out was a purpose for different stroke orientations. When it comes to the shading, I find it that the right orientation can help stay within the outline’s borders.

For the final result, I was annoyed with the misalignment of the eyes, so I took a lasso tool and repositioned one of the eyes a bit (Though it’s still not perfectly aligned). I think it helped a bit. Overall, the result is ok. Not amazing, but not awful either. However, I would have liked to do a few more sketches. Here is the result: (Unlike previous days, I chose to crop this one, since otherwise it would just be a lonely set of eyes in the corner of the canvas).

Conclusion

Overall, I’m a little underwhelmed with this day, mostly because I was lacking in time. But at least I did draw today, and wrote this blog post.

One helpful note about drawing, I find that reorienting the canvas (my tablet) can help with some strokes (Although it’s not the first time I realize this). It makes some of them feel a little more natural. p>

As for the time spent, I spent just over 30 minutes on drawing. As for writing the post, the first draft took 40 minutes, and the revision roughly 25 minutes. This means that writing the post took roughly twice as long as drawing. It also took more time than yesterday, though admittedly I was particularly tired throughout the process. I will definitely need to figure how to write posts more quickly. (Though hopefully practice will help)

As stated in the introduction, tomorrow I will be going on a field trip. I know I’m leaving early, and am unsure how late I’ll be get back. I’ll do my best to draw and post about it, but there is no guarantee I’ll manage to after getting back. Though maybe I’ll just manage to do it all while on a bus, with underwhelming results, hahaha. Stay tuned for more updates!

This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 11 (2024/02/29)