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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So, it appears that being grateful is largely thanking randomness in the world, or divine intervention if you believe in such things. I believe randomness (read: entropy) is a thing, the other thing, not so much. I can’t thank what happens anyway.

Finished reading: Taking a Bite Out of the Apple by Rob Janoff 📚

A book in a series for young adults. I found the twothirds dealing with the Apple logo interesting. The rest dealt with Rob Janoff’s further carreer. This book is clearly meant for wannabe graphic designers.

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 suggest you watch The mystery of Michaelsoft Binbows on YouTube. It’s a love letter to niche write-ups on your website of things you love and probably very few others, yet those who do will thank you for it.

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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Currently reading: Taking a Bite Out of the Apple by Rob Janoff 📚

So far, it’s really good, hard to stop reading. So much positive energy!

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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Want to read: Taking a Bite Out of the Apple by Rob Janoff 📚

Talking about being in the right place at the right time.

I was surprised it was still in print after 3 years. Also, listen to this 2009 interview on the RetroMaccast, which is still active as a weekly podcast.

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. … read more

This video by Jess Karp was recommended to me by YT’s algorithm, as if it knew what I’m up to (art challenge). I guess it did, though I did my searches with DuckDuckGo. The sites themselves use Google Analytics, and so I got found out 😅 by an algorithm.

www.youtube.com

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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I guess I’m in need of clues how to draw. The one book I used had a method that was confusing me, i.e. not helpful. It will slow me down, as learning tends to do. 🤓