There’s an idea that any drawings are better than no drawings. This may result in “bad drawings.” That’s a good thing, since it demonstrates taste. Still, these doodles together feel to me like a wall of shame, because I know I could do better (so why aren’t I?).
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Mentioned on the recdiffs podcast 201 Lessons on How to Draw by Hokusai
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I had this idea of combining something I like with something I don’t. It’s a sketch drawing. I liked the texture on the smoking apparatus. Patrick looks quite wonky. I used references but didn’t copy.
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There’s a tendency in me that says that if I practice hard enough, I can draw anything I want with ease. I think I need to revise that into: if I practice often enough, I don’t mind doing what takes time and effort. Of course, subject matter matters, a lot.
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The last day of the challenge month I tried to do more than usual. If I go by what “serious” artists claim, drawing for an hour a day isn’t going to bring much improvement in skill. Their aim is every waking moment 😨 I am not that serious, TBH. Maybe that’s my problem.
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The sketches below are of the quality I wasn’t willing to share, since they aren’t finished (rendered). However, getting the shape right is important too, and rendering is overestimated most of the times. I tried to start with simple shapes and elaborate on those.
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This month’s art challenge turned out to be a disappointment. Nevertheless, here’s a dog I drew today. It turns out that every artist needs to develop their own way of sketching. Still, drawing from simple shapes is a good way to draw from memory, instead of copying a photo.
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Yesterday I was too tired to draw (or do anything else but rest). Today’s sketches seem so off-model, yet they still resemble somewhat their references. I guess they’re Frankenhorses' severed heads.
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To speed things up, I rushed through the tutorial and quickly sketched a portrait of a beautiful cat. Maybe not the best way to learn how to draw, but it is, after all, a challenge.
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I’m not doing tutorials about how to draw animals. Getting far into a drawing and then realizing your anatomy is off, is both frustrating and enlightening, an opportunity to learn something. I need to get better at simplifying what I see, so I can easily correct it early on.
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I did the bird-in-flight drawing exercise from my art instructional book. The author wrote she based it on a photo, so I guess I should do that as well. Drawing a flying bird from direct observation seems nigh on impossible.
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Although I have little experience with drawing dogs, nor with drawing a long shaggy coat, I’m somewhat pleased with the result. Maybe I should be worried. Am I losing artistic refinement?
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I’m so accustomed to seeing cats and kittens, that I had a hard time accepting the flaws. So I drew stick kittens on top of a printed photo and transfered those onto my drawing as a base. Still seeing those flaws, though 😖 so I skipped the coat markings.
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I’ve sketched dogs before, but only from a photo. To catch up, I didn’t take very much time, so the quality isn’t really there.
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I hadn’t drawn a hedgehog before, and was puzzled by this specimen’s white spines, especially how to draw them. It turns you don’t; you draw the negative space, or, in this case, what’s visible of the black base of each hair. It’s a work in progress.
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I guess I should give up on making the best drawings I can, since that slows me down. OTOH, this sketch resembles a pig, but it very messy, which isn’t making me proud. Then, if only 5% of your creative work makes you proud, you’re top of the line, I’m told.
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I saw a documentary on YT about Darkwing Duck, that was supposed to be called “Double-O-Duck”, as a spinoff of Duck Tales. That inspired me enough to stop the video and start drawing. I have these markers, so I should make use of them, shouldn’t I?
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I experienced the process of internalizing at a small scale when I sketched this Holstein-Frisian cow from a photo reference. In this process, you learn the rules, purposefully forget about them, and do everything as if it comes naturally. Alas, I haven’t drawn cows enough to draw them from memory, using construction and previsualization. I tried it, but failed miserably. So, instead, I more or less copied a photo, not by tracing, but by redrawing. Still, redrawing is a step up, skill-wise, from downright tracing.

It took a few hours, though, to forget what I read about how how to draw cows, how they show off their anatomy, easily stylized as a balloon-bellies suspended as a tent on a skeleton. But then, milk cows, as the over-bred animals they are, tend to be exaggerated versions of their prehistoric counterparts, the aurochs. They are bred to produce milk, and if having a calf wasn’t necessary to start the lactation flow, they wouldn’t even have offspring either.

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It turned out the art challenge that I gave myself for January 2023 wasn’t very realistic. Look at what I wanted to make:

• animal drawings that are somewhat realistic and colored with markers

I’m not very skilled at drawing animals, realistic or otherwise, nor at coloring with markers.

It turns out that the tutorials about drawing animals aren’t very helpful. The basics of drawing aren’t included in those tutorials, nor are the basics of drawing mammals (which is often meant with “animals”). Luckily, I have some art instructional books that do, but those require study and years of practice.

Am I giving up? No. But I do have to lower my expectations, a lot a lot.

So far I’ve drawn:

• sitting cat
• mouse
• rabbit
• horse

Still 30 to go. I should speed up a bit, since the month has only 25 days left.

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I’m struggling to get the 34 animal drawings done in 31 days. It’s already day 5, I’ve studied 3 animals and drawn none so far. I guess it’s the perfectionist in me trying—and succeeding—to interfere with finishing. The sketches are entertaining, though, based on photos.
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