Hobby Blog, Part 1

"I should blog more often," I always say to myself, and then I come up with 100 fun, recurring blog ideas that I don't write down. Months later, when I realize I haven't written anything current to put up, I try to remember all those brilliant ideas I thought I had and come up with nothing.

The Void where all good ideas go

The last time I sat down with a notebook, I started scrawling about current hobbies, so I figured I'd do a 3-part blog on some of the creative projects I've been dabbling in.

First up...Drawing!

I've always been convinced I can't draw, so I started watching a few YouTube tutorials on drawing basics to get started. Basically, I learned that a large part of drawing is reproducing real objects on paper using shapes, light, and shadow. Now, copying art styles has always been something I've been good at, so with a few tips and techniques on shading and what drawing pencils do, I've been able to draw some real life objects I'm pretty proud of.

These are objects around me that I used to try out different drawing pencils:

I was supposed to set up a still life, so I tried these:

I ran across a book that recommends doing a few passes with a black colored pencil to get true blacks in a drawing, and it's really interesting what a difference that can make:

Space Mantis fan art:

  The two below are my attempts to add texture to step-by-step drawings:

These are recreations of photographs:

For the willow tree, I wanted to see if layering twisty lines on top of one another gave the impression of leaves, rather than drawing something more detailed over and over or leaving large patches without detail. I mostly like how it turned out.

Hopefully with practice, I'll develop more of my own art style, so I can draw things that aren't right in front of me, but starting from a reference point is going well. The next thing I'd like to phase in is color, but that's a whole new world.

Stay tuned next week for another hobby-of-the-minute--sewing bags.