Weekley05 STTtttRRrrrRREEeeTttCH GOALS.
Two Changes, 10 time the Chaos -And- Output! Stretch Goals may need other productivity areas shrunk! Oops!
How you doin?
Hope you and your loved ones are doing good!
Welcome to the 5th Weekley Edition! Let’s gooo! 💨
Contents:
01. First things
02. Sketches this week
03. Learnings
04 .Inspirations
05 . What I would like to do next week
06 . Working Processes
07 . Hmmm..
01: First things First
I had mentioned in my last letter that the week was of celebrations of the new Indian Calendar year (and a 9 night festival - called Navaratri - of Maa1 ).
That festival has just concluded, and I would like to announce a Drawing Exercise that I have undertaken this past week2. I have been drawing individual sketches for each of you - friends, subscribers, encouragers!
I haven’t completed all of them, but I hope to send one to each of you before the month passes! If your email is working fine, you should be seeing those in your inbox soon enough! (I’ll be sending some right after this letter3!).
Hope you like ‘em!
A Request:
Could you give me some feedback on my letters to You? I want to get the tone right, conversational - But I am not quite sure that I am succeeding on that front.
How does it feel on your end? Let me know? Either in a comment or on the poll below:
Back to the future!
Back to our Letter!
02 What I drew this Week:
So, obviously I drew some of the sketches I am sending to your inboxes, but I also drew other things this week4. I am including some of them below.
I am not sure how well (or: how badly) these images will load, so I am including smaller sizes of them!
Drawing the Cat5 🐈⬛was quite a lot of fun. In fact, one thing I observed was that my observation skills have improved by and by. (yes very facebook I mean, very meta that!). I got this sketch done far quicker than I expected to.
And some of that quickness probubbly has to do with making nearly 20 sketches this past week. It blew through what would be my initial “starting” process (when sketching) with the tools and reduced that time adjustment by a good factor.
(Should I try that on writing by writing 20 posts in 2 weeks? 🤣😹
No, just kidding. Should I?
Nooo, just kidding. Or maybe not?)
03 Learnings
‘Brushes’ in the Sketchbook App
Discovering new brushes in Sketchbook(link) was fun too! Some 8 of them are basically carpets or such knitted/layered stuff/stamps but on “brushes”. Quite awesome to use them! You can see I have used them in the cat picture as well, where there’s a built-in brush to depict a wire mesh! How cool is that!!
I don’t quite know how I could have done this manually as quickly - even with a scale/ruler it would have taken an enormous amount of time to set that “wire-mesh” chair drawing.
Here this was a cinch - possibly the fastest drawn object in the whole piece!
I am simultaneously wondering if I am not developing a problem-solving skill by opting for the brush…?
But I had only given myself 30 minutes to wrap it all up, and it worked! Without this feature, would have easily been an hour or longer of drawing wire-mesh!
Shadows and colouring.
One thing I noticed was that when I am drawing off imagination, I am not working-in (to the sketch) the Shadows or “sources of light”. I am able to do some of that when working on say, a live image, like in this note below, with the shaded darker tones:
Or with this note earlier (link).
This is somewhat amusing, because when I do photograph images, it is contrast and shadows that are generally what I look to “define” the image I make. Nevertheless, now that I know it is something I have to pick up on, I will probably try it in one of the future sketches - maybe attempt it in the Toad series even.
Off-Screen practice.
What I am somewhat noticing as of now, is that my past few sketches have all been on-screen, digitally. With the conveniences tht come from drawing or sketching digitally, especially “layers” - where you can turn-on/ turn-off stuff, I wonder if I am losing skills that if say the app crashes or is sold off or something flips, I will have to learn from scratch - with possibility of not having enough time to do so. If you are also mostly digitally sketching, what would or do you miss about sketching on paper (or on cloth, even)?
Blending of Colours
Without paper, I am kind of not getting practice on getting Circles right first time around or having some issues with understanding what happens with one colour going over another - which way to blend them. Blending of colours is something I hope to learn a month or two down the line.
Let’s see.
04 Inspiration
I cannot be the only one that looks at these sketches by
and think “CAKE” on at least 2 of them, if not 3.Help me out here: Don;t you see a Honey cake6, a Jam Topped Strawberry cake and one more pink cake (made of lots of sugar, I’d imagine…)
But really, isn’t it wonderful that the buildings are so drawn that they look like cake?
On Sketching outside:
A note, from
(link) on ‘plein air’ sketching, and that - in my experience: it’s beautiful to see and experience!I second the idea of drawing outside if we can. We cannot all go out to national parks or wildlife sanctuaries everyday (and in many places with actual wild / dangerous animals, those are off-limits for loitering, let alone sketching).
But we can capture a little bit of nature or oustide nearby us.
What do you have near you, to do so?
05 What I would like to do next time
Reduce the Stretch goals:
from STTTTTRREEEETTTCCHHHH to STTREETCH.
You might not see it, seeing this letter, but I had the happy choice of not knowing which art to include in this letter. That was actually the hardest decision of this letter! 🤣
Happy problem to have versus not sketching, but also requires much more organisation than I thought it would. Much, much more organising.
Do lemme know if you have a system or process for Organising Sketches (physical or Digital) and how you store/archive them.
Help, please!
Really!
06 Rethinking & Work processes:
I am sharing a couple of notes that are contrarian / counter-intuitive from Anna:
.The First is a simple one:
It has clarified something that has been bothering me - Does sharing stuff writing letters get us to point B, C, D… easily? Or is there something missing. I think Anna has a good point there. Now how to build a Proof of that Concept? I am not sure. (Maybe
might know?)Help?
The second, is here (link), It was a realisation that I had come to earlier, and helped me immensely in seeing things differently.
I’m not summarising it, Go read it. It is good. Then, come back and tell me if I am wrong?😹
07 Hmm
This was funny. And possibly quite APT7:
One little earworm:
There’s this song8 thats been an earworm this past week. Buzzing itself in and out - without as much as a “If I may?”. I’ll just share some of the English-translated lines. If you like, you can then look at the video yourself - (see footnote 7 - alongwith a link to translation of the lyrics).
Thode bheege bheege se nam hai hum
Kal se soye woye bhi toh kam hai hum
dil ne aisi harkat ki hai
pehli baar mohabbat ki hai
aakhri baar mohabbat ki hai
Our Hearts wandered into this adventure of love anew
breezing into it like fresh ever-lasting love
As Yesterday's sultriness still wafts on,
And our lack of sleep still lingers on...
Those were my translations.
If you’re the type to read out - or sing out - poems / songs to your beloved, this one works well. Don’t ask how I know!🤣
And, with that,
Thank you!
I hope you had a good time reading this letter, I hope the inspirations inspired you, perspirations amused you and overall you, your family, friends and your pets9 all had a good time!
That’s it for this Weekley.
The Next letter will be Toad08, which I am very excited for, cos, I have more than 2 illustrations there - something I haven’t done before!!
So,
until next time
cya
MrNoob
Capitan (MrLearnNoobsToDraw)
How many typos in this letter? I think 5?
And, Footnotes Follow:
How the Mother Goddess is affectionately known.
This was what I was referring to in this note:
.
If you haven’t received it by the Apr15, and have some ideas or thoughts, send em ideas over: I could give it a go! (Just remember, that I am a beginner in sketching/drawing, so restrict your ambitions!)
I took on a lot of sketching this week, and that has given me a new respect for people who have streamlined their practice and skills to crank out art every week - or even day (say comics). Suggestions & Tips: Always Welcome!
Read that as GPT? Blame the “AyEyes”.
- who I hope you read this to? -
Mr Noob! Thank you so much for your personalized illustration!
Thank you for sharing my ‘cake’ buildings 😄❤️