March Sketchbook - Week 1 (Patreon)

Week one of morning sketches is in the bag, and it's been refreshing as all hell. I have to say that the first three days or so were difficult. I'm not a morning person, I struggled to think of what I wanted to draw, and getting started I always felt really rusty.

But I guess that was the whole point, to just draw through the rust and see what came of it. As early as the second evening though, I was starting to think about all the drawings/studies/subjects I could try next. Which resulted in a weekend where I drew...pretty much non-stop? So there will be a follow up post with those sketches coming.

Here's a breakdown of each drawing and what I was trying to achieve with each.

March 1st - I struggled hardest on this day and only actually got the portrait done, the other two were done on the weekend. I defaulted to my usual - a portrait, in this case, of Kerry Eurodyne from Cyberpunk 2077. Because I've never been so gay for a 80 yr old in my life. Wasn't happy with the portrait at all, but the point was to just make shit and who cares if it's good or not. The other two doodles are to illustrate Kerry's 'black belt' in cuddling, and how V is a touch starved limpet.

March 2nd - Because subject matter is hard to come up with in the morning, I decided to do some life-drawing from photographs. In this case I used adorkastock/senshistock on Deviantart, who has some of THE best stock photography for this purpose. Was just trying to capture the poses in this case, but also incorporate some variation in line-weight (something I struggle with big time). I gave myself five mins per pose. It went okay? I know I've had a number of people ask me about learning anatomy, and they're often disappointed when I tell them 'life drawing' because that means drawing humans rather than furries. Unfortunately, anthros have mostly human anatomy, and the rest is a lot easier to extrapolate when you know how that anatomy varies in digitigrade vs. plantigrade etc.

March 3rd - I'd seen a photograph of a room on Twitter the day before and set it aside for a quick study. I focused mostly on colour and shape/layout here. I used a thirty minute time limit to avoid getting perfectionistic/detail-oriented. I'm not a big backgrounds fan, and if I am doing a background I prefer exteriors. So this played into a couple of my biggest weaknesses. Felt like I was getting into the groove of these morning doodles though.

March 4th - Knew I wanted to do hands at some point this month. I used adorkastock/senshistock again here. She has hundreds of hand poses, many using tools as well. I put more focus on line weight and making these look pseudo-polished for sketches. Anatomy was important but secondary. I'd really started to enjoy this morning routine at this point!

March 5th - I decided to carry on with hands by applying what I learned to poses from my own hand or from my imagination, then applying fun colour ideas to them. I wanted to give them a sort of tattoo-design fantasy appeal. I felt pretty good about the result !

March 6th - I started watching Critical Role during the week as I worked. I told myself 'I'll just draw a random tiefling because I'm a gay stereotype, not like I'm going to DO anything with this character.' Then I loved him :( I don't have a name for him yet. I've based him off those blue and white china plates with the floral designs on them. I might make adjustments to his design with time, and I haven't even delved into class or other details about his build, but I've been thinking about it. Easily the sketch I'm the happiest with just on the basis of style and the fun I had creating it. Also YAY I MADE A MAN WITH LONG HAIR >8D

March 7th - animal studies is another default of mine if I struggle for subject matter, but in this case I chose to do it for the sake of variety. I specifically went with fawns because they're so spindly and weird. Just used google image references in this case, trying to find as many different poses as I could. On the coloured one, I tried making the lines blue instead of the ochre I would normally go for, and quite liked the contrast/effect that had.

So all around, it went pretty well! It was a struggle to start, but I definitely felt like my creativity was ramping up throughout the week. One issue I feel is carried through all the sketches from this past week is a certain stiffness I get when working from reference, so this week I want to focus on pushing the motion/expressiveness of the poses. Another thing is my tendency to 'outline' rather than using hatching/mark-making techniques to give volume. So I may do some studies that focus specifically on: motion, mark-making, and volume.

I feel like I learn a lot doing this, so if there's interest from you guys, I'd be happy to carry on in later months making weekly study/exercises we can all participate in. I'll make a post later in the month about that if you're interested!