Summer time! Most of June was indeed a break; I went to Japan to have fun and visit family. I visited a lot of places from Hokkaido to the sea parts, and I made a character themed on the mascot of Hokkaido: the Shima Enaga! These birds are so adorable I love them so much. Japan also had lots related to art including bug art, so I’m not going completely off topic. I never would have know you could make art with taxidermized bugs. The other photos are photos of my grandmothers neighborhood. They look pretty cool in my opinion and I might practice drawing backgrounds with one of them.

TW for bugs

Art dump

During the trip I did not have much time to draw except for on plane rides there and back and when I got home on June 26 I thought would have more time to draw but nooo. I gotta work on so much stuff like volunteering and studying more biology (I don’t dislike either but it still takes time). I need to learn how to balance out my time correctly and also stop procrastinating. Luckily I did find a rather cute site called Habitica; its to gamify to-do-list stuff like my owed art, chores, habits, etc. I also got Anki to study for biology since its memorization heavy.

Anyways here is the art dump

Finally, an art study???

To be honest recently I was feeling bad about my art; I’m not that good for my age anymore, no social media likes, not as many sales, not improving, and just not liking it due to my constant style change. I can’t stop though, art is what I’m “good” at and it was my comfort. It would be dumb to give up just because it got a little hard. I remembered those art studies I was heavily postponing (I completely about them), looking back even on my more recent pieces- my anatomy is lacking, so I decided to study art for once and follow Youtube tutorials I found. (I also do not have a stylus anymore: I had a cheap one but I lost it on the airplane after owning it for like a month). The reason why I most likely wasn’t getting better at art was that I didn’t learn effectively by blindly drawing and I was scared of failing (Ironic considering my advice like a year ago was to not be afraid to experiment). I don’t know why it took me so long to realize, but better now than never. First I tried a drawing with no reference or study at all and then did 1 hour of study. I really should have done this soon, it was… fun unlike what i thought it would be! Great for me because I also want to be a doctor and I will probably have to learn detailed anatomy like the different muscle groups ha.

Attempt 1 (No reference, just doodle)

As you can see from the image above, around the joints I made up what to draw due to simply not knowing what is supposed to go there. It is clear that I struggle with foreshortening the limbs. If you don’t already know, foreshortening in art refers to depicting an object (in this case the human body) as seen through an angle/distance.

Attempt 2: I copied from poses on Pinterest I saw

I just looked for drawings and sketches I really liked and attempted to copy them. They look a whole ton better then when i tried to make poses myself (use your resources, using references is NOT cheating).

The next was.. gesture drawings, also a first time doing them but every difficult with my finger, might do this on paper next time. I used a website that generated random people in random poses. I’m going to keep doing this until they get more accurate and faster.

To end off with something nice, please do know that if I can get better, anyone can! I am trying my best to strengthen my willpower to actually learn even when I’m feeling down and I hope it goes well for anyone who needs it 🫶.