“Yakisoba Dinner” Cedar Park, 2017
こんばんは。How’s it going?
Tonight Mariko made a huge portion of yakisoba for the family. Our younger son (13) eats a lot these days, but he’s still so skinny. I think he had maybe 4 servings!
We have a really awesome electric hotplate, which has a number of different pans, including a yakiniku grill. It also has a water pan underneath so that things don’t get too messy. But tonight (and two nights ago) we just used the flat pan. It’s so nice to be able to cook right at the table! 😀
After dinner I sketched a bit while we watched the Dodger game. I wasn’t too happy with the previous night’s drawing. It looks really weird and the proportions and spacing are unnatural looking:
“Ugh” Cedar Park, 2017
The arrows indicate where things should move… but even after I did that digitally, it still looked wrong. Very stiff. So… I decided to look at the sketches of my favorite digital artist Ilya Kuvshinov to see how it should be done.
“Better” Cedar Park, 2017
I used one of his drawings as a reference to figure out the proportions and spacing, and I think I learned a lot. What is surprising to me is that I would have never drawn the face shape like Ilya does. So this is a real eye-opener! It’s so interesting to see where the curves of the cheek change direction. I need to take note of that. The shape I have been using in my sketches looks like a boring almond. But the face that I copied has a much more interesting shape, doesn’t it?
I also used a ruler to keep things level and centered, and also used a circle stencil to draw the irises. I think it makes a huge difference… especially the circles.
Tomorrow I would like to continue with this sketch and later try to replicate it without looking at a reference drawing and see if I can remember the proportions and face shape.
I’m really enjoying sketching, especially faces. It’s so fun! There’s a lot to take note of and remember when I look at drawings that I like. It’s difficult but really interesting and challenging to see the spatial relationships between different elements.
And learning new things makes me feel pretty good. I’m not sure why that is exactly, but I want to keep doing it.
To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.
I hope you had a nice Tuesday.
おやすみ
