Draw What You Love

so you remember you love to draw

it’s always fun to do happy character sketches while writing a chapter where they really suffer

Hello, and welcome to Under the Pine Tree! My name is Jess. I’m a Catholic wife and mother in my late twenties currently in the process of writing the second draft of my first book of a series of fantasy novels ever so dear to my heart that I hope you will be able to enjoy someday. Until that day comes, however, here on Substack, I primarily document the ups and downs of that journey, hopefully offering encouragement and in-the-trenches kinds of advice to anyone out there who may benefit from it it. Especially if they’re crazy enough to attempt writing novels with a young child in the house like me. Thanks for stopping by, subscribe if you like this post, and God bless you now and always!

The Big Question

Do you pick up new skills or do you refine old ones?

Now, of course, this doesn’t need to be an either/or. Obviously. Ideally, we’d do both, going back and forth between the two, learning new things and getting better at old ones as we go about our days.

But, moment to moment, we often need to decide.

For example, for my part, right now, I want to get better at art. I talked a little bit about this over the summer, and putting in the time for this has been incredibly rewarding. Any time I sit down, however, I need to make a choice. Do I pick up a paintbrush and fumble through some absolutely awful water-color work? Or do I pick up a pencil and draw a character portrait that I’ll be rather pleased with when I’m done?

Now again, before I go on, a caveat. If you really want to become skilled at something, you do need a lot of different tools in your back pocket. I’d like to do illustration work for my writing in the long run, and while I might be able to get away with sticking to my comfort zone of black and white (I’m not sure if I want to, but it’s more possible), there’s no way I’m getting away from anatomy, composition, and things like that. I want to branch out, and I am working on that.

Even so, it’s really easy to get caught up in the desire to practice new skills you’ve yet to master when you’re trying to improve your craft — to the neglect of the other parts you love and are somewhat decent at already.

That’s where I was for a lot of August. I was excited to be making a touch of progress in the realm of posing characters and using color (meaning I was trying it at all lol), and when I sat down to draw, that was what I wanted to do. Only, my ambition vastly outstripped my ability, and I quickly found myself stuck, somewhat frozen, trying to find references and guides to help me while the brief windows of time I had to practice quickly ticked away.

Long story short. I didn’t draw all that much. There were a few sketches, but I was losing the momentum I had built up in the first half of the summer. And so, about midway through September, I gave myself permission to just draw whatever.

Sure, it was just a face again? Fine - I like drawing faces! I think it’s fun! And at least I’m drawing something!

So… I drew quite a few faces.

these are not all of them, just a few favorites

And while I don’t know how much of a visible improvement there is in comparison to last time to the outside eye, I see so, so many little differences and improvements just within this realm I already found comfortable. The facial proportions are more consistent, they’re more expressive for sure (what is that, a character with an open mouth??), I’ve figured out some ways I like to shade and do more detail work, and I’m a lot more able to commit to the shapes and lines I put on the page overall. (And the one all the way up top — what is that? Clothing?? Fur???)

Now a lot of this was certainly helped by the artist’s best friend of reference, which I’ve relied on a lot more frequently recently, even if just for small details.

That was kind of a discovery in itself through, because I’ve often thought of using reference in terms of more direct reproduction. Apparently, however, one of the best parts of relying on reference has been learning how and when to diverge from it. Confident in the baseline it provided, I became freer to improvise with the character details, which was both a lot of fun and resulted in some very real improvement.

Reference was not, however, the only new thing I’ve learned to turn to more as of late.

I learned I really love to draw with fine-liner pens, for one.

watch me use more and more ink with every attempt

Where a medium like watercolor is worlds away from a pencil in terms of how you use it, making it rather difficult for me to practice anything but the simplest exercises and techniques right now… it doesn’t feel all that different to draw with a pen.

Aside from the critical fact that you can’t erase it.

That was, however, precisely why I wanted to give it a shot, to learn how to work with whatever I put on the page. It’s more of a difference in mindset than method, which is precisely why it was a level of difficulty I was able to respond to.

And I’m honestly very happy with the results. They’re simple, but in a few of them, I feel like the simplicity leaves them with more character. I have doodled in notebooks with pens before, but experimenting with the different thicknesses of the fine-liners has been great for shadow and detail work and reminding me of the fact that I kind of just love really bold lines in illustration. I see myself using these a lot going forward.

While I still want to learn how to paint at the end of the day, there has been something very freeing in discovering a new medium that I can work with right now. It’s great to push yourself and learn new things. The trouble is, that often requires going back to basics and the basics aren’t always fun. That doesn’t mean they lack value (far from it), but it is really good to have something that is just fun in your back pocket to keep you going and remind you why you’re trying to do this thing in the first place.

So, yeah, to more faces, to more black and white sketch work!

Thanks as always for reading, friends!

I hope you enjoyed getting a bit of a peek into some of my artistic endeavors as of late! Is there any new skill you’ve been trying to work on recently? Let me know down in the comments — I’d love to hear from you!

Either way, I hope you’re having a lovely day wherever you are. God bless you now and always, I will be praying for you, and I’ll see you (metaphorically speaking) back here soon.

Peace.

Jess