Noobles09 What I learnt this Week

A weekly recap of MrNoob's learnings and sketching! To be called "Weekley" series, here onwards!

Hello!!

I am very happy and grateful to all of you whose time & energy is shared with me in reading, commenting, liking and sharing these letters!

Thank You!!

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1. Weekley - The What and the Why?

Well, as you might have guessed it is a pley play on the word “weekly”. And I will be sharing weekly updates of what I have learnt (or unlearnt) - sketched, drawn or not - in a period of a week.

But why a Weekley (weekly) despatch?

Am I trying to be like all big name podcasters/newsletter guys?

Nope.

By nature, and intent: This is a documenting Letter / Blog / Substack.

What I am trying to do, is what this Substack is for: Chronicling my progress in Learning the skill of Drawing!
Since setting up this substack and having written about 15 letters to you, one thing I have found hard to do is capture my progress or process of improvement. In a manner that can be shared to your Inbox as a digestible and understandable form.

I drew things, I sketched subjects, and I wrote drafts and posts - but tying them all, together - in a repeatable form has been hard - and time/mental effort intensive. Even with the Toad series in operation.

But without a check-in or a periodic review - it would be very hard to both quantify and improve my learning of the many skills that make “Drawing” or “Sketching”.

Thus. The Weekley.

Plus, it seems less puffy and stuffy than Weekly.

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2. Did I draw / sketch this week?

Yes.
Yes, I did.

And here they are:

L-R: Sodium Shadow, Hullophant, Delivery Rush (Sketches from this week)

I drew a couple more, but those are in different stages of finish, so I will share them maybe later.

Hullophant

Hullophant¹ in the middle was an interesting one, because I was modelling it off a sketch someone else shared here² - and while drawing it, I had a couple of new things to learn.

• What does an elephant look like when it has raised its trunk?

• How does it look, when viewed head-on.

Surprisingly enough, there are not enough images of elephants with raised trunks, when viewed head-on, most show from the side or front 3/4 profile of the Elephant! So I had to search a bit before I got some idea of what an elephant would look like. (I also tried to add tusks to the drawing, but again, I was not sure what they looked like with Trunk raised, mouth saying something. So I had to leave that out!)

Delivery Rush

With Delivery Rush³ , it was actually a rushed sketch because I got only about 3-4 minutes total from spotting the Delivery person - thinking I should sketch them, getting my tab, to the time he went on his way, to deliver food to someone!
And my sketch of it took about 6 minutes in all - cos that is how much memory bandwidth I had, stored of his own body position, clothes etc., and the composition of the bike as well.

Sodium Shadows:

In the case of Sodium Shadows⁴ I think I spent about 20 minutes on this, and this was the most fun, although the main subject (main the red shirt) was gone by the first 4 minutes or so. His phone call had ended, but I had roughly captured where he was and then waited to approximate his shadow when someone passed by in the same space. It was fun!

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3. Learnings of this week!

Most important learning of this week has been in how to build up colour / layer them (well, at least digitally) in a sketch. I had been wondering how to do so when I chanced upon a post from

Mukta Changmai

and had a conversation with him on that⁵. The most important part, for me was where he mentioned this:

When I paint digitally, I tend to work from dark to light, starting with the darkest layer and gradually adding details of light over it.

This was indeed something I had noticed earlier in my drawings and sketches that I was finding it difficult to get the colours lined up well. So in all three of the sketches above, I tried his advice, and I think it has worked quite well!

What do you think?
Do you have more tips on this front?

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4. What I would like to try next:

I started this sketch⁶ of a Meowster Cat, that I didn’t get around to finishing, and I want to see how much fun and effort it would be to finish that.

Also, Maybe try what

themessydesk

and

Shia Lynn The Artsy Craftsy

alluded to in their notes⁷ about sketching on the go - quick, on the spot. I might try and get an a6 notebook and see it works-out well. And whether it takes more than a few minutes.

Delve deeper into the different sub-skills of Drawing/Sketching.

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5. Some Inspiration

I really liked this sketch and how the colour just flows between and across it, and would like to perhaps try and replicate it one of the sketches next:

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6. Workflow Ideas and Tips

6.1 Casandra⁸ posted a note about how to keep a list of ideas that pop-up when you are working - especially distractive and possibly good ideas. That we should turn into a “shiny list”. That feels like a really nice idea - and while doing it all the while is simply too tiresome and boring, I think it can serve to apply to specific cases.

I am still mulling over how it might work in my case - but it is certainly an idea whose time has perhaps come!

Have you tried keeping any such lists - how has that worked for you?

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7. Finally, some FOMO. or JOMO.

FOMO - Fear of Missing Out

JOMO - Joy of Missing out.

I am not sure which of these you more accurately relate with, but I suppose we all have felt both often enough. Maybe not in those exact terms.

This time, I did, in fact miss out on “The 100 day challenge” running on Substack, and it is more of a Joy than Fear, because I know that it just seems a little too much for me, at this stage to be adding on a 100 day 1hr+ day thing added - so instead, I am trying the “almost daily art note” in my notes.

A practice I am borrowing from

Audhdpainter

!

That’s it from me, for this one.
Have a great Weekend / Week.

MrNoob

PS: The Toad(link) will return to its customary Thursdays, this week, somehow trying it out for a Sunday didnt work well.

Did you spot any typos?

1. Hullphant Note (Link)

2. Here’s Ginger’s Sketch that prompted mine:

3. Delivery Rush (link)

4. Sodium Shadows: (link)

5. Mukta’s response on how he approaches Digital Sketching:

6. Link to note (link).

7. Shia Lynn note here (link)

MessyDesk note here (link)

8. Casandra’s note: