A lot of the drawing I do while at home is about teaching myself eye-to-hand connection and learning how to visually represent things. Being able to see and then translate what you see into a readable image can be a difficult thing to tackle and I know personally that I dont always feel like studying something with my eyes in order to draw it. It can be a sort of artists block – keeping you from practicing or getting better.
What I have found is that turning these drawing ‘chores’ into something pleasant is as simple as taking the pressure off yourself. You don’t need each drawing to be perfect and the best place to pack all these imperfect practice runs is inside a sketchbook.
My own sketchbook tends to be messy but unified. Just from looking through a few pages you can see that I run along with the same style that I have developed but the quality of each one can vary. Sometimes I haven’t managed to capture someone quite properly, other times I get it down in only a few minutes. I don’t worry so much that each sketch looks exactly right because they are low investment drawings that I use to figure out technique and to sharpen my abilities.
A few examples here are of some of my portraits that come from my sketchbooks, inspired either by movies I’ve watched, photographs I’ve seen, or people I’ve passed by.
