Day. 61
I started where I left off; studying heads. I realized today that I don't actually enjoy spending lots of time on a single drawing. Instead I find it more enjoyable to draw within a time frame. I sort of adapted the Draw ––> Reflect ––> Learn cycle, into Draw (for X minutes only) ––> Reflect ––> Learn. I find it to be quite helpful at the moment haha.
Day. 62-64
I mainly spend these three days doing the same Draw (for X minutes only) ––> Reflect ––> Learn cycle, trying to notice if I was making any specific repeat errors. This is where I noticed that I have three specific tendencies:
1. I usually place the eyes too close to each other.
2. I misalign the eyes, meaning one is usually higher/lower than the other one.
3. I mess up the head-proportions, usually making one side of the face look 'swollen'
Day. 65-67
Today I tried combining my head studies with my earlier torso/hip studies. There are heaps of mistakes, though I am very proud of myself, that I managed to notice the body to head ratio being way off in my inital sketch, and correcting it, even if my corrections still weren't perfect haha.
Day. 68-69
My main focus today is aligning the eyes, so that they are at the same height. The second thing (mainly on day 69 hehe) is that I am trying to nail down the landmarks of the face. I have specifically learned that the brow-line, tip of the nose, mouth and chin are the key landmarks that should stay somewhat consistent, regardless of other facial proportions.
Day. 70-72
Today I tried implementing the measurements from yesterday, using the landmarks of the face to get it right. Day. 71, I got a mail from the art-school saying to buy some extra art-supplies (fineliner pens), and an A4 sketchbook.
When I got home though, I began feeling ill, and day 72 I had to call in sick. Getting out of bed to draw on day 72 was honestly a nightmare, because I was running on painkillers and tea, so only spent 30 minutes drawing and then went to sleep the rest of the day.
Day. 73-75
Today I am still not feeling well, but I really enjoy using the fineliners that I bought for art-school. This is also when I learned that one usually use the 0.05 fineliner for almost everything, and then add more volume to certain lines (such as the outline) with the 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 fineliners.
Day. 76
In my 'Future Goals' section from Sketchbook Journey pt. 1, I mentioned that I was contemplating selling my bass, and using the money from the bass to buy a 168pcs coloring set – and today I sold my bass, and went directly to the nearest art-supply store and bought the 168pcs set that I have been drooling over. So yeah, this is the first time that I have ever fully colored a drawing, and my oh my! I love adding colors!
Day. 77-78
Today I dived back into my torso/hip studies, and learned from talking to someone else who is also drawing, that when especially when I am drawing the torso, I must always keep in mind, that the shoulders control most of the upper-body movement, while the hips control most of the lower body movement. This means that I need to be very aware of placing so-called "action lines" that indicate movement for shoulders and hips.
With that in mind, I tried drawing the torso and hip from memory, only to realize that I only know the skeleton, but have yet to think about the muscles that also give the human body its shape.
Day. 79-81
I realized that while I am able to get majority of the outer-shapes somewhat correct, one thing I have no understanding of is the belly. So re-using my knowledge on looking for landmarks in the face, I applied the same idea to finding landmarks on the belly to help me understand, and more consistently draw the belly.
I also learned, that I prefer SamDoesArts approach to anatomy, in favor of using boxes (see day. 7-12)
Day. 82-84
Today I did an artist study of Marc Brunets way of doing anatomy. Today is also when I started applying one of the principles that I was taught at art-school, which is to use circles of the same size, in order to keep proportions of the body to be consistent throughout the entire drawing. I even drew a little explainer on day 82, in the right corner.
Day 83, I did a detailed study of the muscles and muscle-groups of the torso and hip. I want to note that I feel like doing such detailed muscle studies, is sort of like when I did skeleton studies on day 41-51: I won't visibly be drawing each and every muscles group as detailed or refined as here, but because I've done this study, I now subconsciously will be able to spot if for example the trapezius is missing or not defined enough.
• From my own experience, I would say that it depends on what you goal is. If drawing characters is a hobby and there is no intention of doing paid work, then I would say no; draw what you enjoy and have fun with it. However, I will say that I think it is necessary to do muscle studies if the goal is to one day do paid work or dynamic/consistent full-body characters.
• I personally think that before an artist can truly break out of a box and find ones own art-style, one first needs to learn where the walls of the already established 'box' is, and how one can get to these walls. If an artist claims to have 'broken loose' from established principles without understanding or acknowledging them first, it seems kind of disrespectful to others who have invested significant time and effort into perfecting their craft.
• I don't think an artist can create amazing or stunning art, if they only rely on one approach alone. I think that emotion in and of itself is a box that can be broken by method, and method is a box that can be broken by emotion – but neither emotion nor method, seems able to find each others walls, unless they've learned from each other – Thus if they don't learn from each other, they can't break each other.
Day. 85-86
Today is the end of the first 7-day learning cycle, and I have deftly improved on my front view! Side-views and 3/4, I will have to come back to study those as well.
Day. 87-89
Today was a very emotional day, as I got extremely angry at my own inconsistency, and that the landmarks I had been using for the face, turned out to be very inconsistent and unreliable. I ended up asking the art-help Discord community, and luckily, they introduced me to Loomis method, and jokingly said "Now draw 10.000.000 heads!" – which I partially took literally, and spent 2 days just doing Loomis method.
Day. 90-91
Today is the half-way mark for Sketchbook Journey II, and so I decided to try and do a full piece, and use the Loomis method in a full piece for the first time. While facial and body proportions are very janky, I will say, that I overall feel a good improvement, using the Loomis method as a more reliable and consistent way of drawing heads.
Day. 92-94
Today I again tried to combine my head studies with my torso and hip studies, and I will admit, that my drawings on day 92, and my absolute favorites because they are so proportionally well-balanced. And day 94, was the complete opposite of day 92, as I did not have a very good day drawing.
Day. 95-97
Today I started doing leg studies, mainly trying to learn the basics of drawing the legs. I learned that there are two main things to pay a lot of attention to when one is drawing legs:
1. The flow / rhythm of the leg (as shown by the arrows)
2. The balance points of the legs (does the leg look balanced, or does it have an unnatural tilt)
Day. 98-99
Today I did more leg studies, however, without going into too much detail, my mood has been starting to decline by quite a bit. This also means that I've only been spending the required 30 minutes drawing, and then mainly just been binge-watching anime.
SetteiDreams discovered!
I made a pretty amazing discovery during this time as well. I've had issues when using Pinteres, that stuff like expression sheets or proportion sheets for characters from different anime, is usually not consistent in the references on Pinterest. But! It turns out that there exists a dedicated website called Settei Dreams that has scans of the sketches and animation-guide sheets, that were used by the actual animators!
I've been using Settei Dreams to find and practice consistency in my proportions and have been drawing expression sheets when I wake up and have a bit of time to spent before I have to attend morning lectures.
Day. 100
Today is a very special day, because it is day 100! It is so fun to redraw my day. 1 drawings again, and see that I have actually improved quite a lot! The main thing I notice is that since day. 1, I now approach drawing faces, shapes and objects much more methodically than I did on day. 1, where I was basically just guessing and trying to copy what I saw.
I still do a lot of chicken scratching when drawing, but I've noticed that it only really happens with clothing and parts of a drawing that I am unsure about, so as I keep studying (and eventually get to study clothing), my line quality should slowly but surely improve as I gain more confidence in my abilities.
Day. 101-102
Today I spent most of my time attending art-school where I ended up making two drawings that I am super proud of. One is a reference I found on Pinterest, and the other is a panel from the manga Ima Koi (It's a good read!). Day 102, I did some quick leg studies, but tbh, my mood has not improved since day 98.
Day. 103-105
My mood has been declining even more, and I will be honest and say I don't feel well. My mood has started to affect my drawings as well, as I have not been able to continue my leg studies for some time now. While I do intend on getting back to the studies, for the time being, I need to take a quick break from dedicated drawing, and just draw and practice what I want to.
Day. 106-108
These days I am taking a break from studying, and more so just drawing what I want to and what I can manage. It's a little annoying that my mood has affected my drawing this much atm, but – without going into detail – I feel that my current irl situation calls for immediate attention, and cannot be taken lightly. Please note that you (the reader) does not need to worry. I have irl friends and people that I talk to and whom support me through this, so you don't need to worry about me :)
Something that may require a quick explanation though is my "drawing" on day 106. I noticed on day 105 that my spacing is very inconsistent, so on day 106, I tried to create a spacing-practice-sheet. Wether or not it works, only the future will tell, but I find it relaxing to just do something simple.
Day. 109-110
Today I learned just how bad the bleeding in the coloring I use is haha. I love the reference and will deftly have to redraw this same reference of Asada Shino from GGO (Have been rewatching GGO). The day after drawing Asada, I thought it would be fun to try and do a turn-around with the head and the torso.
Day. 111-113
Today I went outside to do some clothe-shopping, and realized that I am quite fascinated by clothing, so day. 111 I did some still-life drawing of some stuff that was on display, and then on day 112 I learned something quite amazing!
So, line-quality. I think its about time that I point out that my line quality is really bad to put it kindly. I have a tendency to do short scratchy lines, and I am still not very confident in my lines when I draw faces, so will have to work on that. But I managed to improve my line-quality here on day 112, because I finally decided to actually focus on making longer and more confident strokes, at a pace that is not too slow nor too fast, but at a pace that I personally feel comfortable with.
• In terms of improving line quality, the main areas of focus is to firstly try and avoid the two most common mistakes: short scratchy lines (also called 'chicken scratching'), and chaotic searching lines, that don't give a clear direction of about where the actual intended line is supposed to be.
• Speed is also very important for line quality, as going too fast will be imprecise and hard to control, while going too slow will give a wobbly and insecure look to the lines. Instead, try and find a speed in-between too fast and too slow, that you personally find to be comfortable with.
• Follow through with your lines, which means that its okay to have your lines extend a bit further out from where they were supposed to end. A good way of practicing this is also to combine it with ghosting the strokes before you do the final stroke. Ghosting the stroke means that you do the motion of the line you want to make, while holding the pen just a bit above the paper, and then lightly lowering the pencil to just barely touch the paper, while retaining the same stroking motion.
• Anything we draw can also be condensed down to 3 main kind of lines: S-curves, C-curves and straight curves. If we divide up complicated stuff such as muscles or clothing into just using these three kind of lines, and doing the entire thing in portions, this can help make the overall line quality improve, as one is no longer doing the entire outline in one single stroke.
• When doing shadows, make sure that the shadows always form a triangle. You can bend and stretch the triangle as much as you'd like, but it seems to be giving much nicer results when the shadows always form a kind of triangle – especially when drawing the folds and shadows on clothing.
Day. 114-116
I spent most of my time doing clothes because I find it to be really fun to draw, and the results usually end up pretty good (partially because with cloths there is more room for proportinal errors compared to faces, since the human brain has a harder time accepting a face that is slightly off, than clothing that looks slightly off).
I also do these drawings to try and improve my overall line quality, and I will say, that I really feel like it has been helping to draw clothes with a main focus on the overall line-quality, instead of having my main focus on being proportionally correct. It's also nice to be able to just sit down, and do still-lifes for a change.
Day. 117-119
Doing more clothing today, both to try and improve my line-quality and line-confidence, but tbh, I am using this whole drawing clothes, as an excuse to just kind of draw what I want to for the time being haha. Been following the study-plan and while it certainly works well... I am so tired
Day. 120
Today is day 120, and I am scared out of my mind because my fear of failure is kicking in hard. I haven't been practicing heads or faces for a while now because my mood has been so just... blergh! But looking at how it turned out, I am super proud of myself! There certainly are a few things I can still improve on, but I am mainly so proud of myself for getting the proportions and the line quality to be this good for the final drawing of Sketchbook Journey. II!
Looking at the final comparison, I can deftly see my own improvement in terms of proportions and overall line quality. While drawing clothes for a full week instead of doing the studies I was supposed to do, might've been a bit careless, I will say, it ended up paying off big time! Now I am even more excited to get started on Sketchbook Journey. III!