Hi guys, for some context, I started drawing my fundamentals last year and I quit after a few months into it, because as I was doing some gesture drawing of human figures, I noticed some regression in my drawings where it felt like the more I kept drawing, the worse it got. I felt like maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it, because I wasn’t able to accurately gesture draw a person within a couple minutes and I feel like I improve slower than the average person learning to draw, because drawing and shading something as simple as a cone and egg can take me 5 hours before it looks right.
Anyways, something triggered me to wanna try drawing again over a year later, so I decided to revisit the fundamental course again, and I gave up on the same course halfway cause I found it boring. Then I heard about Drawabox and also Lauren Horn’s Not a Sketchbook course, so I’m working on both at the same time while also trying to set aside time for me to “draw for fun.”
I realized I enjoy collecting trading cards and find it satisfying to add them to my binders, and I recently found out about ACEO’s (trading card sized art cards) which inspired me to wanna learn to draw again. But there’s a problem: my drawing skills aren’t where I want it to be yet, so I can’t make ACEO’s. Instead, I doom scrolled and found out about twinchies (2x2 inch art cards) and I figured this sized canvas could help me practice without being intimidated by a large sized canvas. I have a tendency to draw blank and not know what to draw, so a smaller card helps with filling up the space and not find it to be so intimidating to start.
Now I’ve gotten 2 binders: one to keep track of my drawing fundamentals and the other to keep track of my drawing studies to document where my skills are currently at, so I can hopefully see improvement over time. I enjoy comparing my current works to my past works as it motivates me to see organized, tangible progression.
In the last pic, I’ve drawn 5 heads from reference, titled and numbered each one on the back with the dates I’ve drawn them and made notes like where it’s sourced and maybe even what I’d like to improve on it. I have been drawing these with pencil then going over it with my 0.1mm pen. My line work right now isn’t as good as the sketch as my hand gets shaky when I am aware I’m drawing with ink lol. I will be drawing a lot of these digitally as well and printing it out to add it to my binder and that will trigger the reward circuit in my brain as if I were adding another trading card to the collection. I think it’s a good alternative to trading card collecting cause it’s cheaper and I get to gain a skill while I’m at it. One binder is for the lessons and the other is for studying but also for fun cause I enjoy drawing people.
Eventually, I’d like to get to the point where I can draw people in different poses. Drawing digitally will allow me to zoom in, so I think the size isn’t so bad for practicing right now. I also don’t focus on shading yet, because I wanna focus on getting the anatomy construction of a person more accurate before adding anymore layers on top which is why I’m doing fundamentals along side people drawing.
I’m just curious what you think of the way I’m going about this? I think I managed to find a way to keep things organized and get me motivated, but I’d like some feedback :)
