I suppose there’s no good replacement for solid practice and going through bad drawings before anything worthwhile appears. Also, that hour went by quicker than I thought. Now if I only had a lighter tough…

Even the first ten steps of a forty-steps process proved to be too complicated and requires more practice with each step, separate from drawing faces. This is going to take a long time to get good at, let alone master it.

I’m trying to draw somewhat realistic portraits from photos. I found a 40-step tutorial, with each step requiring measuring and, frankly, a study on its own. I always had problems measuring angles and comparing distances, due to my glasses. A straight line turns into a curved line, and so on.

If you admire someone’s work, are awed by it, be very, very careful. You might be taken advantage of. Always try to find flaws, and if you can’t, you might have fallen into the trap of stupidity, as described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer observing the rise of Naziism. Once stupid, you’re hopelessly lost 😱

Without the tyranny of reality it gets much easier for me to draw people, though the stylized version is less convincing than a realistic art style. I need to find a middle ground, and then nudge it into more realistic.

Apparently, a digitally zoomed in photo isn’t a good reference, and can lead to “imaginative” rendering by the artist. I did a lot of pre-drawing exercises to get rid of too much anxiety to finish quickly. Still, it’s rushed, not very deliberate. The more I try to calm down the more anxious I get.

After a little practice with lines and drawing contours from observation I can already see improvement in my drawing from a photo. I see the underlying structure and draw that, instead of the photo itself.

I’ve gone back to the Udemy course The Ultimate Drawing Course. Drawing fundamentals are essential and to be studied regularly.

I can see I need more practice.

Drawing from direct observation is hard, especially on an iPad. It feels all clumsy and unnatural. While having the object in front of me, I’m mostly looking at the iPad screen, drawing wobbly lines. Those latter I should fix first, I guess.

I guess one can take drawing from photos only so far. At some point real life observations are needed to improve artistically. Much like practicing in front of a mirror requires an audience at some point to become convincing.

Quick sketch from a photo I took in 2017.

I suppose doing these daily line drawings brings me closer to my goal of a realistic drawing. I should get looser, though.

It’s clear to me that I need to slow down, considerably. It takes time to observe and interpret what your eyes take in. 28 minutes is just too short, but it’s progress.

After commenting with a pixel art version based on a sketch in ibisPaint X, I refined it, and put it in its own post. I can see what to improve upon, yet the general idea is there. AI alt description confirms it. Some learning to do now.

Despite an injury I developed after my half marathon race two weeks ago, I’m going to run a marathon next Sunday. I already know what went wrong (lack of specific strength), and how to prevent it next time—I need to do the supplementary exercises I used to do, like hops and jumps, and running up a stair, several steps at a time, besides the usual exercises like crunches, planks, lunges and push-ups.

So, in order to not stress my body too much, I lowered my expectations for the upcoming marathon race, by starting at a 4:30 hours pace (6:20 min/km, 10:11 min/mi), and perhaps speeding up after the 35 km mark. It’s a sound strategy, provided the injury is cured (enough). I replaced running by bicycling a week ago.

I suppose I’m (re)learning by making mistakes. I really can’t fault myself, because the trainer I’m paying my track & field club for has never materialized. There’s someone, but he’s only interested in faster runners at shorter distances (3 to 10 km). Maybe I should hire a coach, though that’s rather costly, even an online coach or an app like Runna. Doing it all yourself is unnecessarily hard.

🏃‍♂️👈42.2 km👉🏃‍♂️‍➡️

I’m a bit rusty after so many months of not drawing, so I needed a few weeks to be able to share something I’m not too embarrassed about. I know, it’s silly, because so few read this blog. The drawing is made on an iPad Pro (4th gen, 11 inch), using ibisPaint and an Apple Pencil. 🖌️

As a test for my upcoming marathon I ran half the distance in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. The weather was perfect, and I appeared well-rested at the starting line. The first 600 m was a bit cramped with runners, so I couldn’t run fast enough for a sub-2 hours result. When I was finally able to, I sped up to compensate for the lost time. Until the 16 km mark my watch predicted 1h57m30s as the nett time. Then I sped up by 6 percent, forcing a faster pace. Of course, this wasn’t without consequences, and I started to cramp up, with the occasional spasm. Somehow I could keep the muscle cramps under control, and finished in 1h54m35s.

The distance was a problem, of course, but the running speed was, since I hadn’t trained for it. In fact, in the final 5 km I ran faster than my fastest 10 km this year. I clearly was overreaching here, which isn’t a problem, since it was a race, after all. Since this half marathon was a test, I can now evaluate that 4h15m would be a reasonable and rational time for me on the marathon distance. It leaves room for bad circumstances and a bad day. Previously, in 2021, bad weather caused me to run 5 minutes slower than under perfect conditions. In theory, I could run a (very unlikely) 4 hour marathon. I suppose I’ll leave that barrier for the next marathon.

Still to come next Sunday is a 35 km long slow run, with 10 km at marathon race pace, a 25 km long slow run the Sunday thereafter, and in three weeks my marathon race in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands, also on a Sunday. You see, there’s some reason to this madness.

Rage bait is a thing on Threads. Why doesn’t that surprise me? Hopefully, Meta claiming they will deal with this isn’t just lip service. OTOH, Facebook’s supposed to add gen AI “news” items in users' feeds to keep them engaged. So engagement bait is kind of in Meta’s blood, and very bad indeed.

I will buy myself a new running watch in December, and if I finish my marathon end November, it will be a fancy watch. Still Garmin, though, since it’s currently by far the best watch brand for serious endurance athletes, in my opinion at least. My current watch (FR 245) is lacking key features.

Preparing for a marathon after a break of a few years is like making the impossible probable. I think I can do it continuing my current prep, but it won’t be easy, since I don’t have a knack for running long distances. But then, it’s never easy to run such long distances however well-prepped one is.