2021 was a year 2 of covid and lockdowns where I had many troughs and a few peaks of drawing and building a habit. This was also the year that I discovered and fell into the Youtube hole.
Date: 20/6/21
Comment: This was an attempt at a cat. I think I was following one of the books that I have about drawing cats. I tried to draw what I wanted to draw to kick start motivation. It did not work.
Date: 8/8/21
Comment: Time 2 mins
A picture of my cats that I use as wallpaper. I was telling myself it is important to put pencil to paper and the result does not matter ie reduce expectations.
Date: 9/8/21
Comment: Time 2 mins
Same principle and Day 2. I stuck with the same photo to avoid having to make a decision (and therefore a reason not to draw).
Date: 11/8/21
Comment: Time 2 mins
Same subject, different poses but this time I was trying to see if I could capture the differences in the two brothers. I could not.
Date: 9/10/21
Comment: I was told that doing shading is a really good exercise to understand the range of values. The right pencils is also key.
Date: 9/10/21
Comment: Carried on with the values and changing pencils.
Date: 11/10/21
Comment: An attempt at my own hand mainly because it was there and the decision making was limited as was the drawing!
Date: 9/11/21
Comment: First of a few drawings on the same day, all of which revolved around the assets.I was using a reference image.
Date: 9/11/21
Comment: Another attempt at the same assett.
Date: 9/11/21
Comment: A different asset and again was using a reference image from Google.
Date: 9/11/21
Comment: Asset no. 3 and a doodle.
Date: 20/11/21
Comment: Not sure why I waited so long but asset no. 4 and 5 but no reference image was used.
Date: 20/11/21
Comment: Asset no. 6 and again no reference image needed.
Date: 20/11/21
Comment: Asset no. 6 but different perspective and again no reference image. Also asset no. 7 is in there as well!
Date: 20/11/21
Comment: Asset no. 8 and 9 but was using reference images and tweaking them.
Date: 20/11/21
Comment: Asset no. 10 and no reference image needed.
Date: 4/12/21
Comment: No 1 of 3 drawings when I had obviously already decided to focus on faces because there were so many youtube tutorials on faces.
Date: 4/12/21
Comment: Drawing No. 2 of 3 of head angles. It is quite enlightening how the lines can change the direction so easily!
Date: 4/12/21
Comment: A video of how to draw forms using simple stick men. Very useful exercise.
Date: 4/12/21
Comment: The first is me attempting to understand one theory of how to proportion the human form (didnt understand it). The second is an attempt to understand the cat skeleton because I read that knowing it helps when drawing cats. I’ll let you know if it does.
Date: 5/12/21
Comment: Attempting to break down a cat’s head using shapes. I think I may have done this on the sofa with one of my cats as the model (probably George as his favourite place in the evening is next to me on the sofa).
Date: 26/12/21
Comment: Reverting back to the head. At this point I had started the Learn Avec Moi plan – all the best new year resolutions are started before 1st Jan.
Date: 26/12/21
Comment: Some more heads and trying to learn the proportions, using a youtube video.
Date: 26/12/21
Comment: One thing about all the drawings on this day, is that I tried to do them quickly and not get bogged down by detail. In these all I was trying to do was follow where to place the various parts of a face so that it looks natural.
Date: 26/12/21
Comment: One head after another.
Date: 26/12/21
Comment: More heads and a skull, all trying to get a feel for heads and the planes on a head.
Date: 26/12/21 and 28/12/21
Comment: A side profile which I thought would be easier and it is but not by much.
The second on the same page was done a couple of days later when I tried to remember the place of each part. She came out very manly.
Date: 28/12/21
Comment: The first head was trying to use another method of learning the right placement of the face furniture. The eyes were because I saw a video with all the different planes around the eye.
Conclusion to 2021 Drawing Attempts
So November and December involved a lot of drawings over a few days and a tendency towards heads. My one abiding thought was that I needed to stop watching youtube videos of accomplished artists because they were not inspiring me but showing me how far I had to go!