SKETCHBOOK UPDATE: 6+ Days of Daily Doodles ✍🏼

Hi Everyone! 🥰

I hope the New Year has started pleasantly and inspiringly for you! As you know my resolution is to draw more but without putting too much pressure on myself. I try to start each day by drawing in a pleasant daylight. Evening drawing also has its charms, but I noticed that the sun makes me more positive and gives me more energy - especially since there is not much of it now. After morning sketching, I can start work and move to other responsibilities with the feeling that I have already done SOMETHING today. I enter the day with much better mood.

Behind me six days of such doodling and here are some of my thoughts on it…

Goals and methods

My goal is to study anatomy and draw figures because I feel a lot of limitations and uncertainty in these aspects. I think it's important to set yourself a specific goal - at least for a while. Thanks to this, turning on Pinterest I don't have to search long to find references.

Sometimes when I feel like I'm just tired of a given topic but I want to keep drawing, I use a random, simple picture (as with a milk carton). 

This way, I fill the pages of the sketchbook without leaving many empty spaces. Maybe they are a bit random, but I think they are also more interesting with such diversity.

I also let myself redraw anatomy studies of other artists - from the book on drawing anime characters by TB Choi. 

After copying some lines of more experienced artists you can flip the page and try to repeat them from memory. It helps to improve your skills much faster and implement their tips into your art. I think manga and anime style can be helpful for anyone - no matter if you draw more or less realistically. 

Drawing elements of anatomy and breaking down body parts into simplified forms and then studying the whole silhouettes is very helpful for me. It's much easier for me to draw the neck and shoulder elements first and then apply the same rhythms throughout the body. I learned to draw portraits in the same way - first drawing eyes, mouths and noses, than the whole face.  I encourage you to try this method. For me it is very effective.

Observations

I find myself learning quite quickly. Sometimes it's little things I hope to memorize - like noticing that the wrist in an average hand has the same width as its middle three fingers ✋🏽 

Sometimes I notice that my line quality or the speed of sketching improves, but sometimes I just notice what I'm doing wrong and what I need to work on (hands, dynamics of movement, torso length). Most of all, however, I feel satisfaction from doing what I planned and I know that this is what I wanna do. Even if other activities such as creating videos or content for Instagram are now put on the back burner because I am focusing my energy on stimulating an old habit.

Materials

As always, when I return to drawing, I try to use the simplest possible tools. Sketchbook and pencil are enough and give a wide spectrum of possibilities. In recent sketches, however, you can also see a bit of neon color. 

That's because I recently bought three Prismacolor neon pencils ✨ - yellow, orange and pink. They give a great effect when I sketch with them and then finish the drawing with a fine-liner.

Do you doodle?

If you’d like to join this daily doodles or you already draw everyday (or almost everyday) and would like to share it with us, join the “Daily doodles" channel on our Discord -> https://discord.gg/XJrSbEqXPg.

The channel is for everyone who wants to maintain a habit of everyday drawing.

Remember that it doesn't have to be anything serious! A 10-minute scribble on a napkin is enough. Don’t worry too much about the days you won’t draw, just come back and continue. 

Hope to see your doodles there 🥰 

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Hugs ♥️ 

Gaby 

PS. Attached you’ll find reference photos used for these studies 👇🏼 If something isn’t attached I probably drew from memory or forgot to save the photo and now can’t find it lol.