A photo of my full-sized watercolor sketchbook. It's hand-bound with orange, yellow, and green thread. The cover is wrapped in lemon-print paper.
I only have a few pages left in my big watercolor sketchbook. This is an accomplishment for me because I usually have a hard time finishing sketchbooks, and I'm actually happy to look at this one despite not really using it for anything particularly fancy. It also means I have to think about making or buying a new one soon.
Liz Steel has a great post on this topic, How to Choose a Sketchbook. In the interest of thoroughness, I'll talk about the criteria she uses in her post.
I found a fun prompt list of blog questions from Leilukin and Starbreaker (completely independent of each other, as it happens). Nobody asked me for my opinion, but here I am anyway!
I've been trying to come up with something with the appropriate amount of gravitas to say for my first post of the year. This has been unsuccessful, so now I'm just going to say something and move on.
This year, the main goal is to stop thinking about shit so much and instead make like Shia LeBeouf and just do it. This is particularly pertinent to my art — I made some progress in overcoming my aversion to "wasting" sketchbook paper last year, but I've noticed I'm still not immune to the pressure to find the perfect scene or reference to draw. This eats up a lot of time that could be spent doing literally anything else.
At some point in the future, I might be mentally stable enough to do something more measurable like daily drawings. As it is, I'm a completionist, and having any concrete evidence of days that I've failed to do [x] thing only makes me more likely not to continue doing [x] thing because I've already gone and fucked up my record anyway. For now, I'll just do what I can when I can (and make an active effort to find the time).
On the topic of finding the time, I've started pulling out my sketchbook and drawing something around me whenever I feel the impulse to check my phone. Most of the time, that "something" is a mundane man-made object, so I can't waste time looking for something photogenic. Also, sometimes it sucks. It's fine!
Spontaneous travel sketches done in green pen (Platinum Preppy 03 inked with Diamine Evergreen). Left: A sketch of traffic done while waiting in traffic. Right: A sketch of a table at a mall coffee shop.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm feeding into the online sketchbook consumption problem by posting pages, even bad ones, here, but this is a shitty unserious blog that I don't really expect anyone to look at. If it stops being that, I'm dead and have been replaced by a body double. Happy new year!
Digitally painted sketches of 3 original character headshots (left to right: Ian, Andy, Bruno) over a brown background. Each character is lit from their front left. Ian is a Latino man with light freckled skin, blonde hair tied into an unkempt ponytail, and a large white scar running through the left side of his mouth. His face is knit into a scowl so deep that his jaw is clenched. Andy is a black woman with dark skin, no hair or eyebrows, and an unreadable deadpan expression. Bruno is a Sicilian man with tan skin and black hair, including a short, well-groomed beard. He's smirking, but it reads more as confident than smug.
For me, drawing people takes a lot of time and effort because I have to look up references and agonize for hours about whether everything looks right. On the other hand, painting an already-drawn human is a chill and weirdly brainless activity. All I have to do is flesh out a structure that's already been established.
I've been way too tired to draw lately, so I pulled out some old ref sheet headshots to paint instead. I really like thinking about how the drawings should translate into 3-D structures, and it's just fun because it adds a layer of believability to the whole thing. Some general thoughts about these clowns:
Ian's features are interesting because he would look young for his age if he wasn't varying levels of angry all the time, but he is, so now his face is just stuck like that forever. He has a lot of history that I keep meaning to talk about here, but one thing that's funny to me is he started out a lot lankier and sharper but has rounded out over time as he's gained weight.
Speaking of lanky, Andy has taken over that job and is doing great at it. I love her face structure, and it's fun to draw because there's never any hair to cover it up. Also, if you know me at all, you'll know I love drawing thick, expressive eyebrows, so it's been a fun challenge getting her to emote without them.
Bruno is just friend shaped. That's all. He always needs to look a little cocky, but in an endearing way, so I enjoy figuring out how to telegraph that even in something boring like this.
I found out about a local secondhand art store earlier this year, and it's turned into my first stop when I want new art supplies. I've been able to try a lot of new mediums that I wouldn't have thought to buy otherwise. It's easier to find surprises when the inventory changes constantly (and you have to dig through bins to see all of it). Good quality supplies are also pretty cost-prohibitive, and I hate to spend so much money on stuff that might sit and gather dust.
I've seen a lot of end of year reviews of people's purchases of new stuff, but not a lot in the way of new used stuff. So this is a recap of notable secondhand purchases from this year (and, by extension, cool stuff I've gotten to try).
