daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Another quick sketch tonight, but I think the body doesn’t match the face at all. So, I’ll probably take the body and re-draw a less-cartoony face for a future drawing. Looking forward to it, actually, because I am pleasantly surprised at how much I like the simple body pose. ☺
Tonight’s sketch is inspired by a song I love – “Stars Above Us” by St. Etienne. Often when I am driving and listening to music, I think to myself I should draw something from the song. So this is the first attempt at that idea.
Stars above us, cars below us
Out on the rooftop, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Nothing can touch us, baby
Just had to get out of there
I’m tired of all of those places
Up here is out of sight
Outside with the breeze on our faces
Let’s go up the stairway
My band doing it their way
Our sound’s ruling all the airwaves
Butterflies taking flight
Stars above us, cars below us
Out on the rooftop, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Nothing can touch us, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Out on the rooftop, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Nothing can touch us, baby
Sun sets over the city
Won’t you come and catch it with me?
Follow me, right up the stairway
Let’s have some fun tonight
Stars above us, cars below us
Out on the rooftop, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Nothing can touch us, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Out on the rooftop, baby
Stars above us, cars below us
Nothing can touch us, baby
Out on the rooftop, out on the rooftop
Stars above us
Out on the rooftop
Stars above us
Out on the rooftop
こんばんは。How’s it going?
I bought some new paper for my notebook today. It’s a 100-sheet pack of Maruman A5 Plain Paper which I planned to use as a base for taping sketches on top of. But to my pleasant surprise, the smooth, white paper is really nice to sketch on. It erases well (VERY important for me) and it takes ink nicely too! I’m very happy with it. 😄
Today’s sketch was inked with Rohrer & Klingner Verdigris using a Sailor Fude De Mannen pen.
I hope you had a nice day!
またね～
こんにちは！How’s it going?
I still have a lot to learn about drawing, but one thing I’ve never been decent at depicting are hands. In fact, I avoid them whenever I can! So last night I decided to tackle the problem and devoted a bit of time watching some videos and practicing and I think I made a lot of improvement. Which is probably not a huge deal because my previous drawings of hands were horrendous. 😝 But it was a lot of fun practicing, and so satisfying to actually get better. My first attempts were pretty bad (and honestly a bit discouraging), but persistence pays off, and by the end of the hour or so, the claws started to look like human hands.
Speaking about improvement, I think I’ve gotten a lot better about breaking through frustration, discouragement, and setbacks when learning new things. For instance, in my ukulele practice, I don’t have a lot of natural talent, nor rhythm, but sticking with it has paid off for me. I’m still not great, but there is a definite improvement and I have a lot more fun practicing knowing that every minute I play is not wasted – it’s like taking small steps on the long journey of improvement.
I have a quote written down by an artist that goes something like, “No line drawn is ever wasted.” I love that! Even a sketchbook page with bad drawings is valuable. You don’t even need to keep those drawings (declutter those!). Just the fact that you made the
These are the two videos I watched. The bottom video is the one I watched first, but the top video is the one I this is is better to begin with (at least for me). It’s also super funny and relatable. The bottom video is great in that it teaches about proportion and the digits Please take a look!
またね～
Here’s a digital drawing I created the other day. I shared a sketch in an earlier blog post, and this is the follow-up finished work. I really like the Chinese qipao (cheongsam) dress… it’s very cool! However, I kept things simple and went with an all-red background and dress, just using black outline. The red is the same as the Chinese flag, and there are gold highlights in the eyes which also match the flag color.
After I thought I was finished, I posted this to Instagram but then I found something I didn’t like so I fixed it. However, you cannot replace images on Instagram, and I had already gotten a few likes, so I just kept it. I was able to replace it on Flickr and Artstation. ☺ Can you spot the difference?
The small edit was the small delineation of the neck. I knew something bugged me about it, but it took me a little while to figure out what it was.
To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.
I hope you had a nice day!
またね～ – B 
