Sketchbook Update 73 (Patreon)

[pdf version attached]

So I took a week off last week and I guess my immune system also decided to take a week off, because UGH haha. I saw friends and then I guess got some kind of throat infection (?!)  and couldn't talk or laugh without coughing all week...yeehaw.  I am usually very non talkative and it was the first time in a year+ seeing friends for more than a couple hours, so it makes sense hahahaha.

Some of the doodles are from playing board games with said friends- small world and darkest dungeon, I find it fun to have more of a diary-type sketcbook. It's nice to look back and remember what I was doing at the time.

I basically spent my week off playing vintage story, which is like minecraft but gruellingly realistic and not actually like minecraft at all. To get a pickaxe took me about a month in-game, I am not kidding when I say it has SO many steps. You're also desperately trying not to starve, and trying to store enough food as winter creeps ever closer.

I've also been bitten by the youtube aesthetic bug and bought one of those glass dip pens and some inks, which was kind of fun to mess around with! The colour inks I bought were cheap diamine inks, and the grey one is sailor 224 which I've wanted for years! It reminds me of the aurora...its so lovely. (I say youtube aesthetic...I mean how often art youtubes feel very samey and all go through phases of being sponsored and sent certain supplies, or they all try out some new trend product? It drives me nuts and I KNOW its fake and commodified and bad, but. it does compel me on occasion.)

There are a lot of studies in here, I was getting frustrated with not knowing how to draw buff/fat characters better, so I watched a lot of strongmen videos and drew from them, and also some cheerleading spotters...which I have found are often quite pleasingly stacked but with less insane definition XD. Youtube by chance recommended it to me- I watch a lot of dancing so it makes sense- and I have entirely ruined my algorithm with tiny girls doing flips.

I have left in my rambling notes about sketchbook art, I assume it's probably good to see that even artists that seem to have it together Do Not. There's always been a gap between my sketchbook and digital art, and I've yet to figure out how to bridge it! I haven't used erasable pencils (inktober aside) for almost a decade, because I was trying to be BOLD and BRAVE and get a confident quality of line...but. I think maybe I need to go back to pencils (before inking) in my sketchbook, and at the same time I need to use the undo tool less on my tablet. I'm hoping to meet myself in the middle. Honestly I don't know why I expect myself to be able to just do something first try, when even in digital art I have a sketch AND undo 1000 times. So maybe I'm allowed to help myself a bit...

Unrelated but I'll get back to making nsfw now haha! Hello to new patrons, and thank you everyone for your patience while I took a week off!