This Could Be Good

Technically my first class was in senior year of high school. I took AP Art. I do not remember any specific lessons.. yeah it was more of a filler kind of class. My teacher did not really teach us. I have no idea what she did during class. Anyway. I took my first instructed art class last month in December at an art studio about 30 minutes away from my work place.

The class was titled Realism drawing. I was planning to recap each class I had but, uh, I didn't. We learned a lot about improving our observational skills. My instructor was attentive and gave great feedback. I feel like drawing has been my hobby since I was younger but if I were to count the days I treated it like a skill to develop, it would definitely be less than a year.

I enjoy traditional drawing a lot more now. I found that if I use a reference, it's better for me to print it out rather than looking at my phone or computer monitor.

I wanted to post some of my work during the class. I found it hard to work outside of class but I was able to dedicate a couple of hours.

Some of things of note that stood out to me:

• Using relative measuring to improve observational drawing
• I'm terrible at drawing negative space. It's something I have to work on. But it's useful figuring out shapes especially for flowers or organic objects..
• We had five classes. During the second class I started to take notes because I realized after the first class, my memory completely wiped. I'm not an auditory learner.
• "Your lightest dark will always be darker than your darkest light"
• Applying tone is hard. I would like to buy pencils with harder lead. The paper I used was textured and my lead was generally on the softer side (B+)
• Drawing on black paper with white pencil is really fun
• We went over facial parts before going over the full face. To me, it's kind of weird but I understand why it's hard to jump into the entire face. I may apply this to learning emotions

I enjoy drawing portraits. I'd like to take the portrait class someday. Likeness is really difficult.. I'm taking figure drawing next quarter though. I've never taken a figure drawing class but I'm looking forward to it.

I intended to write about art more it kind of fell off since comic con.. lots of things in my life fell off. I think I drew a lot in 2025 but I have a terrible memory of it.

Previous

I'm not great at words this week. Something I've been struggling with lately is forming thoughts. Here are some of the things I practiced this month... I forgot I even attempted the study of the lake. But that was barely a week ago.. I don't really know what's up with my brain lately. But I've been trying my best. I thought the heads were really difficult. I used referenceangle for that.

I have a lot of other sketches too.. when I was doing the little doodles, I was trying to make thumbnails but I just let my brain enjoy itself for that one.

When I couldn't think of anything to draw and nothing I drew made me happy, I turned off my brain and painted a cheese burger. I'm mostly happy with the fact that I tried. I spilled ice cream on it :( I would like to paint more, traditionally.

This week is SDCC. Mostly known for famous actors and movies but this year, Marvel isn't coming... I have already scheduled some panels to go to which are mostly related to art. I'm going to do something crazy and bring my sketchbook!!!!

I 'completed' the study page I was working on. Some thoughts:

• The value study of the face upside down was easier than when I flipped it right side up. It felt easier to choose where to place values when I couldn't interpret it as a "human face", I guess. I have a lot of assumptions about how to draw the "human face" so when it was "right side up", I had a significantly harder time because I worried about how it looked.
• Then I got tired and found an easy fruit. Cherries are always great.

This week I am working on some figure drawings or gesture... I bought the Creature II pack from TrueRef. I know I don't have to purchase reference photos to practice art. But I really like these packs so I wanted to support the creator.

I have been working on some other small stuff that I posted on BlueSky. I'd like to become more skilled at drawing cute chibi characters.

Today I went outside to draw but I could only last about forty five minutes before I packed up. Well, next time maybe I'll last an hour.