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  • A shrunken and improved version of an earlier piece I did for Pixel Dailies, prompted “paperweight.” This one I did for the Divoom community.

    A pixel art depiction of a smiling white cat wearing a red collar is displayed on a square digital screen.

  • For a contest by a user in the Divoom community. It’s my cat Maahir, a Muslim name which means skilled, skilful, proficient, experienced, clever, genius, and fits him perfectly. I used two photos as my reference, and the rest is drawn as in-betweens, with motion blur.

    A pixel art depiction of an orange cat rolling from side to side is accompanied by the text my favorite animal.

  • Only a week ago I reached level 7 in the Divoom community and told myself to pace myself with interacting with the app. How did that turn out? I’ve reached level 8 today. ’Nuff said.

    A framed artwork features pixel art with the text I've reached level eight! on a textured wall.

  • My entry for Divoom’s 2025 Hugging Day, with the description:

    There are other ways to show love than through embrace. Not everyone is a hugging person. Love isn’t an emotion; it’s a promise to take care of one another, despite what feelings are at play right now.

    A pixelated word HUG appears at the center with a colorful pattern background, surrounded by strawberries, flowers, and bows. It then animates into anagrams of the word, HUG, GHU, and UGH.

  • Seeing how much effort it took to make this animation, I gave it away as a free template to the Divoom community for use in someone’s own projects, with a requirement to mention my username in the description. We will see if this has any legs…

    A pixel animation of an alternating blue and orange colored circle rotating on a pink background.

  • Some pixel art animation for the Divoom community I came up with in a few hours.

    A pixel art image of an alternating purple cat with blue eyes and orange cat with yellow eyes is displayed on a digital frame.

  • I can see where I went wrong here. I was trying to make my sketch look like the reference. I’m supposed to draw a generic head shape first, and only then modify it, adding its personality. I need to step back and squint, so the person goes away, and structure, generic building blocks, remain.

    A partially completed digital drawing features a sketched portrait of a man, alongside a reference image in a grayscale palette.

  • I’m sure there are many out there who are not able to imagine the human head as a compound shape, e.g. a rounded plate attached to a sphere with its sides cut off, or a complicated construction. Why not simplify even more, and build a head out of that? It could be a good intermediate step.

    A drawing of a man's head with annotations explains that a head is neither a block on a cylinder nor a cylinder on a block, questioning traditional construction methods.

  • I’m trying to “get” the Loomis method of drawing heads from construction. I got as far as drawing a sphere, but still can’t see it as a three-dimensional object. It hasn’t clicked yet. I’m nothing but patient, though.

    A digital illustration features a geometric cube with a sphere inside and a sketched portrait of a person, accompanied by color swatches and the word SKETCH.

  • I had to confirm for myself that in order to grasp how to render 3-dimensional forms onto a flat plane, one has to understand how to render 3D forms as flat 2D shapes, and add shading and shadows to those shapes. Drawing from life (instead of photos) helps, but it is key to stay open-minded.

    A geometric sketch features a triangle, a circle, question marks, arrows, a multicolored checkered floor, and a color palette on the side.

  • I probably should stick around level 7 on the Divoom community for a while, since being there causes me to neglect my portrait drawing skills. Priorities, priorities…

    A framed artwork with a stylized number 7 and the word level in a digital, pixelated design.

  • I turned a selfie into a 64x64 subpixel animation for the Divoom community.

    A pixel art depiction of a person wearing a white visor and blue shirt is displayed on a digital screen.

  • Loomis states that we best construct the head “by drawing a ball resembling the cranium, which is round but flattened somewhat at the sides, and attaching the jawbone and features to it.” This proved to be very hard for me, almost impossible, because drawing by constructing is rather alien to me.

    Two overlapping spheres with intersecting lines, displayed in a digital art interface featuring various color and tool options.

  • I wondered what would be a good animation for my Pixoo64 LED cloud display? I guess a cute cat on a floating cloud. Maybe this is the direction I should be going. It should also appeal to a younger audience.

    A framed pixel art of a cat with green eyes on a blue cloud and pink background.

  • Just three rapid sketches to keep at least some focus on portrait drawing. I can feel the New Year euphoria quickly fading. There are so many things that need “immediate” attention, since it’s a new year, and people like to try new things, so there’s a need to remind potential customers what’s up.

    A sketch features three portraits colored in red, yellow, and green, with a color palette and the word SKETCH below them.

  • I made two pixel animations, one to note that I have reached level 6 (whatever that means) in Divoom’s pixel editor, another to celebrate the occasion.

    A retro-style pixel art image features a goose next to an egg on a screen, accompanied by vintage cars and the year 2025 displayed above.

  • One should often lower one’s expectations, since excellence isn’t sustainable. If your low-effort results are still “passable”, imagine what your maximum efforts will going to look like. So doodling has its place; it’s non-committal practice, here with the POSEmuse app.

    A cartoon figure labeled stickman wearing a hat, orange shirt with NULL on it, and holding a scythe stands against a patterned background.

  • I thought I’d try some naive drawings according to Andrew Loomis. Clearly, I need more practice to be able to draw heads using his methods. The heads aren’t stick-figure quality, neither what a serious beginner-artist would do, but somewhere in between. I’m missing something.

    Four hand-drawn sketches in different colors depict unique male figures with varying expressions and hats, accompanied by the word SKETCH at the bottom.

  • An app called POSEmuse wants you to trace nude images. Since those are seen as NSFW by non-artists, I put some clothes on her. It’s playtime for her pets too.

    A person with short hair walks forward with a purple monkey and a small cat perched on their shoulders.

  • Today something very simple, more like doodling. Circles are important, though, because they are so useful in designing a drawing from imagination, or drawing the “unseen” part of a head, so the seen part makes more sense to the artist.

    Three sketched faces with exaggerated features are displayed on a digital canvas with a color palette and pixelated text reading SKETCH. Process video of what appears to be three circles, each turned into some kind of exaggerated face.