Looking at where I am currently, I want to leave a few notes for going forward into 2026.

Short list:

• Colour: beware, use it cautiously
• Anatomy: now ready to study, practice and experiment
• Drawing: tending to realistic and less comical
• Drawing from imagination: ok, but not too long and allow refences
• Size: work bigger and occasionally work even bigger
• Tools: pencil, grey fine liners, pale watercolurs, coloured pencils
• Where:
  • at home: draw/study from books and postcards
  • at home: draw portraits again
  • in museums: draw from plaster casts and portraits
  • woods: draw nature (gesture, shape, form and texture)

At the end of 2024, I attempted to build up a feeling of expectation and a little pressure for me to continue with the drawing of small fantasy figures from the top of my head. It didn’t work out the way I had expected. Once the first excitement had passed, i.e. the joy of seeing that I could just invent a character on paper, I was let down by the experience of seeing myself make the same mistakes and not get the results I had intended. Looking at them now, with sufficient emotional distance to them, I think they are funny but when creating them I’m trying to achieve something more polished and with a greater “wow”-effect.

To achieve a greater level of proficiency in my drawings I will approach things differently this year. First of all, I think my figures will be drawn bigger than postcard size. I will accept the fact that I can use photo reference to influence and create a first draft for the drawing. I will create photo references myself.

When I reach a point where I’m not sure about the anatomy, I will crack open my anatomy books and make drawings of the difficult or confusing part (to be honest, I’m going to have to do that a lot). The order in which I intend to do this is important. Instead of studying and then drawing, I will start my drawing and then pause to study the parts I’m having difficulty with.

I’m going to use and refine my knowledge of perspective, shape and form. I will study the Great Masters (especially Renaissance), but I will not just copy, I will look for their usage of angles, overlaps, shapes, juxtapositioning and gesture.

The following 6 drawings were created during a 5 day workshop I took part in. We used dolls, photocopies of figures and anatomy charts. Additionally, the teacher came and corrected a few minor things, things I had been doing wrong all along.