anti-procrastination month!

So the drawesome prompt for September is to finish a work-in-progress. This is an excellent prompt (if not 100% welcome, because I procrastinate for a reason).

The first thing that came to mind is this heart that I've done three versions of (I'm not including one of them because attempt #2 was pretty similar to attempt #1 just ... worse. I got it into my head to put slightly more realistic eyes on the face and it made it so much creepier.)

The second thing that popped into my head is that I want to finish up sketchbook #11 because I hate it and it's annoying me. So that's a goal of one to two drawings per day to fill it up and get it over with.

And the third thing that popped into my head is that I am overdue for a Jared Padalecki re-draw. A few years back after a gap of years of not really drawing anything, I gave myself the challenge of filling up an entire sketchbook without tearing out any of my drawings. This after a lifetime of ripping up drawings that I hated so I'd never once actually filled a sketchbook. One of the first drawings in that sketchbook was a *hideous* colored-pencil sketch of Jared Padalecki and it took a lot of willpower not to tear it out and throw it away. I'm so glad that I stuck to my vow and saved it because later in the same sketchbook I tried again and it was so much better. And thus I made a tradition of re-drawing that same photo reference once a year or so and it's now been almost two years since the last attempt.

And I now have nine completed sketchbooks that I haven't torn any pages out of. Here's the inside cover of #10. It's about half full and I hope to have more stickers in here by the time it's done.


Anyway, back to the heart drawing... this is another reason I like following art tutorials aimed at little kids. (The other reason is just that they are relaxing.)

Following this tutorial...


...I came up with this...


...which ultimately lead to this...


I'm still not 100% happy with it and want to give it one more go, but this is already so much better than I could have done without the kiddie cartoon practice. Being able to break up a drawing in my mind into a simpler drawing helps so much. (Remember, kids, it's not plagiarism if you label it a "study"!)

Jared Padalecki

This is a warm-up that I'm counting more toward my "fill up sketchbook #11" goal more than my "re-draw Jared Padalecki" goal.



The big thing I need to figure out — that after years of practicing this same drawing over and over I still have never even really attempted — is how to accurately depict stubble. How the heck do you draw stubble?! I can't wrap my brain around it and thus far I've kind of just given up and added a lot of rough scribbles as an afterthought. (Every time I do this, I sort of curse my choice of a stubble photo. Why didn't a pick a clean-shaven photo reference? Why didn't I just pick a woman to draw for my art-progress comparison? Why Mr. Scruff?)

I will attempt another version of this sometime this month and see if I can't put actual effort into the stubble (and the eyelashes and eyebrows ... basically all the short hair is hard).

Anyhow, here's my Jared Padalecki collection to date:

2017 April Crayola colored pencils sketchbook #1	2018 January Faber-Castell colored pencils sketchbook #1	2018 August 6b graphite pencil sketchbook #3
2019 October Pilot Precise pen + water sketchbook #3	2020 December Blick markers Faber-Castell colored pencils sketchbook #5	2022 September Blick markers Copic markers Faber-Castell colored pencils sketchbook #11

Progress? (I don't think the new one is that much better of a result than the 2020 version, but I know I spent a lot less time and effort on it, so I feel there's a definite improvement in the ratio of effort-to-results.)