Haywood

Woohoo, a new month! It's kind of nice to restart with each new month, giving yourself new goals and deadlines. It's refreshing. I was watching my friend stream Hearthstone last night, and since the majority of my screen was taken up by the stream, I couldn't really draw anything on the computer. I decided to pull out a dusty sketch book and throw down some pencil sketches. I seem to go back and forth frequently, learning and forgetting. The key I've found to drawing with pencil is working with a soft touch. A single pencil can simulate a varying number of values and marks.

It's a nice change. When I work softly, I noticed that I hold the pencil roughly 2 to 3 inches above the lead. However, when I draw digitally, I usually hold the stylus about half an inch for the point. This shorter grasp greatly constricts the variance of my strokes and shapes. It also cramps my hand more easily.

I've additionally had the bad habit of heavily using one digital brush in only one manner, making my work bland and lacking nuance. For whatever reason, I get a brain-lock and make the thought of changing brushes very difficult, despite my vast assortment for selection.

Some days, I just don't like using low opacity on a blank space. I feel like the lines need to be solid, so I opt to use dark black lines when I really need to be using soft, varying lines. This can make my drawings very rigid.

Here's a little digital sketch I did right before bed. I took what I was relearning from the paper sketching and applying it to the digital space. It's a quick few minute sketch. It might be hard to understand, but there are a lot of minute visual notes in the sketch for me, because I will probably use this to make a finished piece.