One of the habits that has fallen off my daily activity list has been drawing and I would like to fix that. It’s something that I’ve done daily before, but my schedule is just a little too busy and I have prioritized other things ahead of it, such as reading, playing ukulele, and watching YouTube.

So now I just need to decide on a set time within my day to devote to this. It’s actually kind of fun to try to figure out when this time will be. And will I have to drop one of my other daily activities?

Right now, I am just drawing before I go to sleep. Literally in bed. But I also like to read at that time, so I need to find a better time to draw. I hope to have this figured out. Fun fun fun.

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Here’s my first drawing for October!

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So, Inktober is happening and I have been keeping up with my digital version or the project. I did double-up on Saturday because I was too busy on Friday to draw, but other than that it’s been a successful first week.

One thing I started doing is working with reference photos, in which I basically look at the photo either in a split window on the iPad or on another monitor while I draw it. These sketches are really fun and I am learning a lot about proportion and seeing things as lines and shapes rather than people. I was actually a little worried that I’d have a lot of trouble drawing from reference photos because I got a bit frustrated when I tried that before with faces, and ended up resorting to tracing directly over the images (which looked awful anyways). So these drawings, while super-simple, are really encouraging me to do more.

Please take a look at my reference photo drawings and the time-lapse videos below, or check out my sketching Instagram account if you are interested. And there are more videos at my YouTube channel too!

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Hi all! I’ve been doing quick sketches and doodles on my iPad almost every day (even if it is for just a few minutes) for a while now, but now that October has started, I thought I would give Inktober a try. I’m not going to use ink, nor follow the official prompts, but I’ll just try to do a more “complete” sketch every day. So, without further ado, here are my first two sketches:

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One of the aspects of drawing on the iPad that I love is the ability to select and adjust the positioning of facial elements. It’s really difficult for me to draw it right (or even get close) the first time. So I have to move eyes, noses, and chins around till they look right. And then I’ll have to step away for a bit, or maybe even a day or two, before looking at the sketch again with fresh eyes and then see if I got it “good enough” or need to work on it some more.

It’s a process that takes a long time overall, so I have several drawings going at once. It’s all a lot of fun though, and rather than being frustrated at not being able to draw it right the first time, I get a lot of satisfaction when I realize that the drawing has gotten even just a tiny bit better. Little improvements!

I hope you had a good day!

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

I hope you bear with me while I share lots of sketching posts. I’m keeping up with my daily habits, and sketching is one of them. Tonight while was looking at the timelapse video that Procreate made, I noticed an interesting progression as I refined the drawing.

At the beginning of the video, the sketch looked like the artwork that I used to make in college and right after I graduated. I was really into Japanese ukiyo-e art at the time, so that’s where I got most of my influence. That was around 1990:

Then I noticed the drawing went through a couple other phases, which are reflected in my more recent sketchbook drawings from a couple years ago:

And then it progressed to the style that I have been kind of stuck at since late last year:

Finally, we end up with today’s evolution:

These days I am looking towards my favorite illustrators, so of course, I try to emulate them. I love Eguchi Hisashi‘s work, so I take many cues from his work. Also, Ilya Kuvshinov is awesome, and I recently discovered Aka, whose work blows me away.

As I continue to practice, I’m excited to see at what pace I can continue to improve. It’s a fun hobby, and so satisfying. And it makes me look at other illustrations and art in a different way as I try to decipher how artists draw different facial features, the color palettes they use, and the way they draw lines and blocks of solid color. It’s fascinating.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

I’ve been using the iPad and Procreate for my sketching this past month and I love it. I can make edits easily and can pick up where I left off immediately. And that convenience means that I can make adjustments to a previous sketch at any time in the future. Not only can I do that, but I can create duplicates of the drawing and try different things. Digital drawing is so great!

But that got me wondering about when to call something “finished”. On a few of my sketches, I think I am done, so I share the image on the blog, ArtStation, Flickr, and Instagram, but later I figure out a new way to do something or notice a part of the sketch that I can do better, so I’ll go back and make the changes. I guess it’s like George Lucas going back and re-editing his Star Wars movies many years down the line.

So with the knowledge that I will most likely make changes to existing artwork, I don’t know if I can ever call a drawing “finished”.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my digital art can constantly evolve, and those moments in time when a drawing is shared are just milestones in something’s existence. So, as I improve in my drawing and become more proficient with my tools, I definitely want to re-visit my earlier sketches and make them better, and won’t feel guilty about doing that. I suppose making a snapshot of earlier “versions” is maybe something that should be more intentional. By snapshot, that could simply be exporting a jpg and saving it with a unique name.

Who knows… I may end up with several version of the same drawing, but Monet completed over 250 paintings of water lilies, so I guess it’s okay.

Here’s a sketch that I worked on tonight. I’m happy how it turned out and was ready to share on Instagram, but I can see a few things I want to update or try. For instance, I’d like to see if adding a sleeve instead of her bare arm would look nice, and maybe try adjusting the position of the eyes. If you have good eyes, you might notice that the first photo in this post has some differences in the drawing as well! I took that photo thinking I was done, but then the mouth and nose looked a little too simple and primitive so I had to edit them. But anyway, here’s a snapshot of the progress:

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

My daily drawings have shifted over to about 90% digital with Procreate and 10% on paper in the 2 weeks that I’ve had my iPad. I guess that’s to be expected with a new drawing tool. It’s so fun to see what is possible using Procreate, but even though it is a different way to sketch, I still find myself on the same path of learning, and right now I am concentrating on line-drawing. I make progress little by little each time which is really encouraging, and using the iPad has sped up the process. Just the convenience of undo and multiple undo is game-changing – it’s like having a magical eraser. I love it.

I can see farther down the path of my learning journey now, which was kind of muddled before. It’s becoming clearer that I need to keep practicing line drawings (still a ways to go), and start expanding from just faces to more poses, and then maybe larger compositions, and finally, work on color. Not sure if color will work its way into the process earlier or not, but I am thinking it won’t be detrimental to dabble in it. At any rate, it’s exciting to think about all the things that can be created while learning, and that is good motivation to keep going.

I have some thoughts forming about digital vs analog art, and it kind of interconnects with decluttering, but I’m not quite there yet to put it down on “paper”.

In the meantime, here’s my latest practice sketch, and the timelapse drawing process. For the hand, I looked at a reference photo, but I didn’t like how it was turning out so I traced the photo. But looking back at the timelapse video, I think the non-traced version would have been fine.

I’ll keep this drawing as-is and move on to a new one, but in the future, I’ll probably come back to it to work on color.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

I’ve really been enjoying creating little bits of digital artwork on the iPad using Procreate. It’s a lot of fun trying out all the different brushes, and even creating my own versions. I definitely gravitate to the inks, but I usually start my sketches with the 6B pencil, then switch to a new layer to use the ink pens.

One really cool thing is that you can easily draw perfect circles in Procreate – after drawing the oval, just hold the pencil a bit longer, and the oval will reshape itself into a circle. This is so convenient for starting the basic shape of a face. I love it!

Right now, there are two subjects I am practicing with Procreate. One of the subjects is landscapes with watercolor effect, and the other is the stylized portraits, like tonight’s sketch. For this one, I went with a thick ink brush, in a loose style, then used the smudge tool to blend the edges a bit. I like how the hair turned out, and although the face is not as detailed as some of my other sketches, I liked trying a new thing. The big eyes and tiny mouth and nose makes a fun style!

I think I’ll keep this version, but duplicate it and work on it some more. Just another fun thing you can do when you work digitally. 

I hope you had a nice day!

またね〜

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

I couple days ago I bought an Apple iPad 9.7″. The reason I bought it is because I wanted a good drawing tablet with a screen, and to me, the 9.7″ iPad was the best combination of quality and price. I’m not a fan of Apple products (mainly their ecosystem and the awful iTunes application) but the lure of Apple pencil and Procreate was too much to resist.

I’ve had the iPad for a couple days, and I love drawing with it! Procreate is such a fun program to use. I ended up drawing late into the wee hours of the morning the first day I had it.

Compared to a traditional drawing tablet like my Wacom Art tablet, it’s so much more intuitive and fun. The pinch to zoom and rotate on the iPad is awesome! It makes sketching so easy and convenient. I’d say it’s a game-changer.

I’m still a newbie, but I wanted to share one of the “watercolors” I created. I imported a photo from my China vacation, then traced it by hand and colored it in. I’m pleased with how it turned out, especially for a first attempt.

One really cool feature of Procreate is the timelapse feature. It’s pretty neat how it’s always recording your brushstrokes. So fun to go back and watch! Check out the video below to see how I drew this little watercolor:

I’m so happy with Procreate and the Apple pencil. I find iOS to be decent, but the file system baffles me, and iTunes is still maddening. But if I use iPad for the intention I bought it for (sketching), I am more than satisfied.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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