Tragic: I wanted to draw nice leather shoes but then I had to draw people attached to the shoes. And then clothes attached to the people.
A monochrome sketch of Ian sitting on a chair with his left arm draped over the back. His posture is slouched, and he's sitting with his legs spread. He wears a white shirt, dark blazer and slacks, and leather lace-up shoes.
A monochrome sketch of Bruno sitting on a stool with his left foot propped up against the footrest. His arms are crossed and resting on his thighs. He wears a black turtleneck and necklace under a white suit. He also wears a dark coat draped over his shoulders and leather ankle boots.
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.
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.
Two drawings of sunflower bouquets in brown ink and alcohol marker. The marker was used in single-colored rectangles surrounding each of the flowers. The drawing on the right features black eyed susans and uses yellow, light and dark green, and orange. The drawing on the left features lilies and uses yellow, pink, orange, and peach. The author is bad at flower identification and can't tell you much about the rest of the flowers.
I've been faffing around with a Sailor fude nib I bought a few weeks ago. Fude nibs are bent upwards so they provide line variation as you change your pen angle, similar to a brush or brush pen. I'm still pretty bad at using the nib intentionally, but it does cool stuff if you mindlessly draw with it. You can block in color really fast with it, which is awesome but also requires frequent dipping, even with the built-in feed it comes with, because that is a fuckton of ink.
