My latest head drawing practice in charcoal:

... Seems like this is the only path to mastery. Nothing works for days. Then you get a glimpse of hope, one good drawing, perhaps two... and you're back to frustrationville. Rinse and repeat.

Weekly head drawing practice in charcoal:

This year started with a plateau and a couple of false starts... But now it's already looking to be a great one. Here's to an amazing 2020, Steemers! :) Charcoal on newsprint, from photo reference. Time:

Happy New Year Steemers! I'll try to be a better contributor in 2020 :)

Time spent: 2 hours. Materials: smooth newsprint and charcoal pencil. Reference: photo.

To be honest, I had a couple of busy weeks... Meaning, I didn't get the chance to do much drawing and painting practice. All I had time for was a few master studies in charcoal:

This past Sunday I decided to level up my practice and do a head master study in gouache. I love artists like Rockwell, Leyendecker, Cornwell... and other midcentury American illustrators. And luckily,

My obsession with head studies continues. Been doing lots of gouache heads, and ink heads, and charcoal heads. Here are a few highlights. First, a quick head sketch in gouache: Next, an oil gesture exercise,

Anders Zorn was a great Swedish artist. But when you're (like me) starting your journey in art, the one thing he's most famous for is his limited color palette. You see, through out his career he painted

Weekly head studies continue... Portrait gesture in gouache: Little head quick-sketches in ink:

I said I'd start practicing figure drawing... but I didn't manage to do any of it this week. However, I kept practicing drawing heads whenever I could. A little bit of charcoal, ink and gouache. Here's

More head drawing practice... Proportions keep improving. And likeness is getting better, too. I think I'm ready to add some figure drawing on alternate days from next week...

One more head from charcoal drawing practice. Trying to see how far I can push it in the shortest time possible. I probably spent about 30 to 40 minutes on this. The proportions a still off and the rendering

In the past few weeks I've gone back to charcoal and done some head studies. I don't like charcoal. It's too messy. But it forces me to approach drawing more like painting. And that will help me improve

I've been busy trying to figure out gouache and watercolor. And the more I'm using both, the more I like the opaque quality of gouache. I also like how you can just forget what is what and use both mediums

I decided to dedicate a new sketchbook to gouache... and doing more painterly stuff. Oh boy. I thought drawing was hard? Painting is 100-times harder! Blood, sweat and tears...

What do you do on the 4th of July? If you're like me, you practice drawing the head :D But I didn't start with the example above. That was the final piece... You see, I'm realizing that drawing (or painting)

I was traveling for the past two weeks. Which means that I didn't do much drawing or painting. The result? My eye-hand coordination degraded quite a bit. (It happens every time I don't practice for a while.)

I'm at a weird spot right now. Or it may be another plateau... But the point is, it feels like I'm going backwards. Nothing works. The colors are muddy, proportions all over the place... I go through these