trying my hand at drawing

Hi loves,

So the other night for some reason unbeknownst to me, I had the urge to draw something. Now, I’ve never been an artsy person or creative in that sense – give me a pen and paper and I could write you a 10-series fantasy novel about the most imaginative things, but ask me to draw those things on paper? Nuh uh. Not a clue.

So why I had this urge, I don’t know, but I did. I think it’s because I kept seeing these sped up drawing process videos on my Youtube recommended and I was always so astounded by the end product I was like hey, I wanna try that.

So after finding some blank paper and a random pencil that was sitting in our kitchen draw (because apparently I don’t own one myself) I started drawing. I was like hm, I wanna (try) and draw something beautiful, and what, of course was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of the word beautiful?

Mr. Kim Taehyung.

Now, I cannot draw for shit so how the hell I thought I was suddenly going to try drawing a portrait for the first time in my life and it come out looking good I had no idea, but I guess you have to aim high for these things (right? someone tell me I’m right). So I started looking for reference pictures.

Like I said, I cannot and have never drawn anything in my life so when I came across this photo (below) I was like…okay maybe I can try my hand at this. 75% of his face is covered by a mask which saves me a fat job of trying to draw facial features and he’s also wearing a beret so I don’t have to draw hair either. How can this possibly go wrong. 

Anyway, after about 2 hours (?? I’m not sure, I wasn’t really counting) this was the end product –

I hate it. It’s awful, I know. We’re pretending this one doesn’t exist. And after a while I stopped trying to follow the original photo which is why basically nothing matches. Though considering I didn’t use a grid method or anything for proportion and I was just copying off my computer screen using a random pencil I’d found in the drawer, I think it turned out …okay. It could have been worse, I guess. The beret is wrong and the bridge of his nose is the wrong size, his body isn’t in proportion with his head, I don’t like his eyebrows (honestly I just drew them randomly and then decided not to change them later) and his eyes aren’t at all realistic (because there’s not much you can do with a crusty old pencil) but then I have to tell myself that this was also the first time I’ve ever tried to draw anything so I need to shut up and stop being so hard on myself.

After this failed attempt and realising a crusty pencil just wasn’t going to cut it, I went out and bought some actual proper drawing pencils because I thought well, I wanna try and give this a proper go. With the new pencils, I did a drawing based on this photo (below), and this was the outcome –

Is it better than the first one I did with the crusty pencil? Yes. Much better. Is it the best thing I’ve ever seen though? No.

As I said, I’ve never drawn before and therefore, don’t know how to shade. The first time I shaded this I didn’t like how it turned out but I couldn’t rub it out because otherwise it made weird streaky white lines everywhere (there’s probably an artistic technique for how to properly get rid of shading but I know nothing), so I had to go over it in order to re-shade it and that’s why this whole drawing is so grey, because it basically has two layers of shading instead of one. It’s way too dark and looks really ashy to me, I need to add some whites into it to try and lift it a bit. I also could’ve done a better job of the hair but I blended it too much and then I had to define the edges where the face was in order to show they were two separate things (because the shading was so dark) so it looks blockier than it originally was (it looked really whispy before but I had to go over it 😞 )

All in all I think it was an improvement from the first one (because well, you couldn’t really get any worse than that), though it also could’ve been a lot better because I’m still not happy with it (!!), I wish I could’ve defined the features more and made it look more like him (because the features are out of proportion) and yada yada. You get the idea. I suck.

So I then decided to give it another go with my new found knowledge of how to (hopefully) try and shade things properly to see what my drawings would look like without a million layers of wrong shading on them – below is the photo this third drawing is based on and my current work in progress –

Now, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I don’t totally hate it ??? I changed the hair because I’m not about to try and draw curls and I need to figure out how to make everything darker and more defined without it looking unrealistic because the actual photo itself has a lot of light in it, also ignore the crazy neck shading because I’m still working on that and yes I did write the word ‘tie’ in the sections of his tie just so I wouldn’t forget where it started and ended. I’m not an artist pls.

All of this has happened within the past week, so last week I’d never drawn a thing in my life because I thought I had no talent for it but then three drawings and a few days later and I actually think…I’m okay at it? Dare I say it? I definitely don’t have a talent for it or anything, but I think because I’m enjoying it I just…I don’t know. Join me next week for when I go from being tone deaf to the next Ariana Grande. Anything is possible kiddos.

So yes, I think I’ve found a new hobby? I don’t know. It’s nice to just stick on some music and draw, I’ve discovered. I don’t know what the point of this post is but I guess I’m just trying to say that it doesn’t matter if your art is rubbish (like mine) or doesn’t turn out the best because it’s about the process and sometimes you just get the urge to do these things and as long as you have fun with it that’s all that matters !! Like, just because you can’t sing that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t belt out your favourite song when it comes on the radio or just because you can’t dance it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t boogie around the kitchen with your friends and have a good time. Just because you’re not very good at poetry doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write it down in your journal when it pops into your head and, like me, just because you’re not very good at drawing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t draw when you get the urge, (for the first time in 21 years but you get the idea).

So yeah, art is expressive and art is great and weird and messy and it’s not always good, but it’s yours and you should embrace that. Once I’ve finished this drawing and I try out some others I might do a little drawing series or something to see if there’s any improvements, (but I never stick at anything so don’t hold your breath), I just thought this would be a little something different to share hehe.

All my love,

Picasso
Chloe .xx