may 2018 sketches (+PDF) | LONG POST

this month's sketch collection is a bit different from the others, i hope you enjoy 💕

all the images are below in the post, but you can also download the PDF for a closer view!!

first up are some digital sketches, both from finished illustrations (that i haven't posted yet) and random doodles and practise.

followed by some doodles from my tiny, not even postcard size sketchbook, which i mostly use to do quick drafts to collect ideas:

except for the first one, these are all ideas for the noctis in wonderland artbook :> very rough, i do hope you can still make out what's going on, ahaha;;;

this next one's heavily referenced from a photograph i saw on twitter the other day but i cannot for the life of me remember the photographer's name or who retweeted it onto my TL orz;;; of course i simplified the picture a lot and didn't stick to the reference completely but i wouldn't consider this to be creative piece of work, just looking at something and translating the things i see onto paper...... i do still like it, though.

then - the other day i bought a really cheap DIN A5 sketchbook with pretty shitty paper that i've been using for daily doodles. every day after waking up i'll sit down for up to an hour to just.... draw. it doesn't have to be pretty, it doesn't have to turn into ANYTHING, the only purpose is to experiment and draw whatever without any pressure at all. since the paper isn't very good i'm not afraid to use it and risk messing up.

most of what's in there will never be posted publicy, because it's Bad Stuff but i don't mind sharing it here with you guys.

this first one is some experimenting with gouache, i have almost zero experience with it, i know a bit about theory but not a lot about how to put that to use, i have yet to figure out the perfect viscosity to get evenly coloured areas and how to blend?? the blending struggle is on the left page, on the right side i got distracted by ethan from h3h3 and ended up drawing him |D

the days after i went back to ballpoint pen, inks, polychromos and did some small doodles with them. not much to say here, just drawing whatever came to mind.

back to some gouache; still figuring out how to blend colours, the top left try made me think that maybe i could try some landscape painting from time to time to improve and learn but after that i ended up with a very gay pastel milkshake. LOL

the first little square was a fail, the panda looks okay, the third one was a disaster, so i covered it up with some gold paint :'> the next day all i wanted to do to fill the remaining squares were shapes in different colours. good way to focus your brain on one thing to literally forget about everything else.

the next ones are actually from june already but i still wanted to show them....

june 2nd i gave myself more time to draw in my sketchbook, the first page happened while i was listening to an old livestream with bobby chiu who was talking about drawing exercises, and this one was about "just start drawing ANYTHING and see what happens". so that's what i did.

afterwards i tried out my fountain pen, for some reason decided to glue that sheet of paper into the book, dropped ink on it and let it flow while shaking the book and blowing at the ink. i liked the colours and it made me want to draw the little guy on the right, which is an element from the game RiME, which i love deeply and have been replaying lately. it's only a redraw from a screenshot i found, so not a lot of own creativity went in there, but that wasn't the point at all.

i have been drawing into this book for every day for over a week now and it's honestly the best thing i've done in months. to any artists i can highly recommend getting a cheap sketchbook for yourself and take some time to just.... be free and do whatever you want with it. not everything needs to be pretty. or meet expectations. sometimes the things you'd never consider to be good or beautiful will end up being the pieces you like and appreciate the most.