drawing – Stuartdraws

2025 – a Retrospective

Dec 20, 2025Stuart3 Comments

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.

My Plan for 2024

Dec 29, 2023Dec 29, 2023StuartLeave a comment

Going into the New Year (2024), I have been looking back on what I created and enjoyed creating in 2023. At the end of this post, you can find a gallery of drawings which I currently plan to use as flags and signposts, to keep me on track, but also push me further.

Looking back at some sketches I made and ideas I had, I’m convinced again, that I want to attempt a few (colourful) illustrations from imagination, based on scenes/pictures that have popped into my head. This is a challenging activity and exhausting, but I eventually enjoy the results tremendously.

Last year, I identified two major influences I want to focus on: the artist Sempe (or Franco-Belgian comic illustrators in general) and the German expressionists from the beginning of the 20th century.

Do not do: still life is boring for me, and I will continue to avoid it. And I will not drink and draw.

Study: shapes and especially sub-shapes (which I haven’t completely unlocked the mystery of yet) shall be on the top of my list.

I will enjoy the act of drawing.

Tools to use: always use tools I enjoy using, which is a black, waterproof felt-tip pen, but also watercolour with a waterbrush. Colourful brush pens are nearly as exciting. Colour pencils are still valid for a portrait or for brushing over the dry, rough surface of a finished water colour drawing. Pencils are a good start for a drawing or when in study mode.

Fountain pens are good for writing, I should not waste my time and energy drawing with them, unless absolutely necessary (e.g. nothing else available).

Don’t hesitate to return to an older drawing, they are not finished until I say so. Add more colour, more contrast, clean it up. Study what I like and what I don’t like about them.

Use early morning gesture drawing or quick sketching to challenge yourself:
– look at the reference photo for a few seconds (shapes, rhythms, idea/story)
– look at something else (book, “stuff”, anything but the reference)
– draw a quick sketch (in pencil and pen), not a copy, the drawing should be based on the idea/story
– repeat 5 or 6 times
– return to the references and without copying address any issues (spend as much time as feels comfortable to you)

Urban sketching, i.e. sketching in public:
– go to places that interest me (places you have a connection)
– sit on benches, curbs, walls, steps (have your inflatable cushion with you)
– draw people, draw their hands, draw people interacting
– do not think you have to sit in cafes all the time
– focus on one motif, use a double spread of the A5 sketchbook
– don’t attempt to capture too much (houses can be backgrounds, use shapes and soft edges)
– sketch a thumbnail in the corner, to keep focused
– enjoy, but keep details to a minimum
– add writing with local, historical data, sometimes

Test colour combinations on pages in sketchbook, make notes on my thoughts about them. Remember I like blues and greens, use them!

Stuart, these are some of our favourite creations of 2023, they include the capturing of depth and space, using shape to represent surface anatomy, identifying focuspoints, using contrast, using colour, telling a story, and drawing figures from the top of our head.

Herand saves the day

Dec 12, 2023Dec 13, 2023StuartLeave a comment

A strange name, right? Anyhow, that is the name of our model tonight. He stepped in for a pretty new model, who unfortunately forgot the appointment, shit happens. Herand is an old Irish surname, bit like my name, which is actually an old Scottish surname, perhaps meaning “the house-ward”. Well, whatever, they are just names, and they don’t make life easier if they are uncommon where you live.

As I said, Herand jumped in and managed to get to us after we had been drawing each other for 40 minutes. I’m quite happy with the results, I’ve got my technique to capture a pose in a few minutes (the poses were all between 2 and 8 minutes). The technique starts with a very quick “envelope” type geometrical shape that also identifies where a few major parts are to be placed (e.g. the head), and the angles of the shoulders for example. I do that in graphite and then I switch to a pretty thick, water-resitant black felt-tip pen and quickly draw some contour lines (this all has to pretty fast, I know that angles are important, clear direction changes and I try to consider places where no contour lines should be placed – but I often get swept away in the moment and make “too many” lines).

Then the real fun starts. The colour, or tone value gets to show up. This is the phase where I can start looking at the model in more detail and check for bumps that I can identify better, listen to a memory here or there (“look, that crease identifies where the 10th rib is”, “oh, is that the iliotibial band I see there?”, “right there must be the ichium – sitting bone”). And on come the hatching lines, to build the form. Cast shadows get clean edges, always trying to convey the form which the shadow was cast upon.

And then the evening ends suddenly, it’s time to go back home, hyped and full of energy. It’s 10pm and the next day is already calling.

Good night!

Let’s keep on rolling

Dec 10, 2023Dec 10, 2023StuartLeave a comment

Yep, it’s been a while … but I haven’t stopped drawing.

Life drawing is back on the menu, I go to weekly life drawing sessions and have started teaching at an evening session again — 9 times each semester.

Urban Sketching in cafés is still my thing, I love the clutter, the people, the contact with real people and the anxiety of perhaps being “caught at it”.

This semester, I attended a weekly drawing class, where I started to switch to watercolours and then eventually moved back to my felt tip brushpens.

Here are a few galleries of what I’ve been up to lately. These are galleries, which you can activate by clicking on a pic and then move around the pictures with the cursor, like on a carousel. To exit, just press the “Esc” button.

So, here are the life drawing sessions, one evening, one page 🙂

Then we have urban sketching in cafés and a few stuffed birds at the museum. And then some of my fellow attendees at the drawing class I was going to.

Finally, we have … a portrait I painted/drew, while at a drawing event in a fellow artist’s kitchen, and two more exercises from the drawing class I was going to.

The Sweet Spot

May 30, 2017StuartLeave a comment

There was a time when I drew once a week. I’d come back from my weekly Life Drawing Session, rush to my scanner and upload everything to my blog.

Since being the owner of a sexy smartphone with permanent access to my Facebook and Instagram accounts, and basically drawing daily, the blog posts have become less and less.

However, I’ve been down in the dumps lately. I’ve been dependent on too many outside influences and have been negligent of my own feelings and goals. On top of that, I’ve lately spent a few hours raiding the last remnants of my previous 3 years of drawing and painting. I’ve done away with about 80% of that stuff now, but it left me feeling like the past three years hadn’t made much of a difference.

This feeling of frustration had been growing in me for some time and may have helped me to move to a different style which seems to be keeping me from being too tidy but also from being too sloppy. I actually think I may have reached a temporary sweet spot. I’m not sure if I want to stay in this very spot, but it’s allowing me to break out of my usual line making activity and I’m additionally no longer afraid of painting before drawing.

I look, I paint and then I hold a coloured pencil pretty firmly and draw very focused but fiercely, making unforgivable lines and curves.

I used it just now at Life Drawing and this is what came out.

20170530_5 20170530_3 20170530_1 20170530_2 20170530_4 20170530_6 20170530_7

The Art of Practice

Apr 19, 2017Apr 19, 2017StuartLeave a comment

I had an interesting conversation a short time ago while I was in Barcelona on an Urban Sketching workshop. I’d asked my host if anything had surprised her about me, because we had only met and chatted for 5 minutes in December the previous year.

She said, yes, there had been one thing: I’d mentioned to her during our online chats that I get up at 6am and practice gesture drawing for 30 minutes, make breakfast, and then continue the practice for a further 20 minutes. But what surprised her was that I really do what I say.

I guess we’ve all been there at one time or another, telling ourselves we practice or sketch regularly, but are we being honest to ourselves, are we really keeping to our planned routine? I noticed, half a year ago that I was giving myself a lot of slack, not keeping to my envisioned schedules, so I changed my routine and my setup at home to make it as easy and comfortable as possible to just get up and practice, and it seems to be working (even worked for a week in Barcelona).

However, the invested time and regularity of practice is just part of my way to achieving my goals.

Mindfulness is a further important part. I have to be completely present in that very moment. I have to understand or try my hardest to understand what I am doing then and there.

Gesture drawing is about a few lines and shapes that must tell a clean story. What story is the pose telling me? Which lines and shapes can be used? Where is the rhythm? How can the rhythm be tamed, accentuated, put to work for telling the story?

I have the first volume of Walt Stanfield’s Drawn To Life, which is a collection of evening session life drawing handouts and quite hard to read actually. Anyhow, I’ve been chewing myself through it and what I’ve taken out of it is a nagging, self-criticizing voice which keeps asking me what Walt would do with this pose and whether my result would please him or not. I have decided to tell myself, my gesture drawings would not please Walt, but if I put some more effort into them, they may do one day.

I believe this to be a good approach, giving in to the idea that I can’t please the teacher, but I can work harder at improving.

That has helped me understand one of the psychologies behind me posting on Facebook, Instagram and Sktchy: I’m fishing for compliments because it helps me become complacent and feel comfortable at my current skill set. Ok, I don’t want to be too hard on myself, but I think I’m going to have to consider posting on FB and IG (and perhaps even Sktchy) only when I believe I have met a milestone in my progress and even ask explicitly for feedback.

This is also coming from an experience I made on Sktchy a week or two back. I asked for critique and got some. I took it to heart and I believe it moved me on another few inches on this never ending path to mastery.

For more information on the path to mastery, take a look at George Leonard’s book “Mastery, The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment”. I believe it is legally available online in digital form.

A Sketcher’s Traveling Kit

Feb 12, 2017Stuart8 Comments

I left for a short (4 day) trip to India 2 weeks ago and got back last Friday.

As usual, it wasn’t easy deciding what to take with me. The correct number of shirts, pairs of pants, socks, toothbrush and co. were obviously not the issue. The real pain points were of course: which art supplies shall I take with me?

It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone reading this that I packed too much. Yes, too much, as most of us probably do. But I think some art friends will be surprised in a moment how little I took and still see me planning to reduce it on future trips.

I’ll start out with what I took along, I’ll add a photo of it later. Then I’ll let you know what I’ll take along in future.

Lamy Safari fountain pen (F nib) prefilled with De Atramentis black ink
empty Lamy Safari (M-nib), with one unopened purple ink cartridge
Tombow Calligraphy pen (hard nib)
a Kolinsky paintbrush, size 8
two containers for water
a nib and nib holder
a pot of India ink
reduced set of 6 coloured pencils (Polychromos)
one unused(!) water colour sketchbook (heavy paper)
one Moleskine A5 diary (half full)
pencil, kneadable eraser, pencil sharpener, pen knife
Schmincke watercolour tin for 12 pans (filled with 10)
a small Koi waterbrush
a sleeve ripped off an old t-shirt
a book with reference photos of figures, to practice drawing at night

2017_too_many_art_tools

So, what will I take along in future, based on what I used of the above?

a Moleskine diary
the magical Tombow Calligraphy pen (hard)
the small Koi waterbrush
ripped off sleeve of a t-shirt (wraps wonderfully around thumb and wrist)
tin of 10-12 watercolours
pencil (optional), kneadable eraser (doubly optional)

Wow, that’s pretty simple. That’s basically nothing.
But those were the tools I pulled out all the time.

while waiting for the planes arrival at departure
while on the flight to India
while waiting in the hotel’s lobby
while at the breakfast table
while watching my colleagues play cricket
while practicing poses in the hotel room
while practicing drawing lines when the colleagues were bowling

2017_just_enough_art_stuff

And what did I sketch while I was on my trip?

Ok, there’s one in there with coloured pencils, perhaps I’ll slip the reduced coloured pencils set in too. The pencil case is soooo sweet 🙂 But that’s it! … I promise … I feel myself wanting to add a real paintbrush and a container for water. But if I want to whip the tools out in seconds, and also pack them away as quickly as possible … then they can’t come on the trip with me.

Been doing a lot of inking lately …

Nov 6, 2016Stuart6 Comments

Before I start, first things first … a warm welcome to you, my treasured follower!

I started this blog 2 years ago and uploaded every single picture, sketch, watercolour and gesture drawing I made. There weren’t many, I wasn’t drawing every day and I wasn’t drawing up to 4 hours a day back then. Nowadays, I try not to draw for 4 hours a day, but I must admit, this Sunday is coming close to 4. Although, I can strongly recommend putting in that much time if you are really serious about improving your skill set, you still must be warned that it should not all be practice. The practice needs to be counter-balanced with project, fun and study work.

I’m saying this because I’ve been on a downer lately and I believe it to be because I have not been balancing out my practice with some nice and easy fun assignments. I think I may have managed to maneuver my way out of it, but there still seems to be one ingredient missing … project work.

So, what have I been doing for practice? Basically, gesture drawing (here is something I wrote about it: https://wordslye.com/2016/07/18/gesture-drawing-and-opinion/)

I am adding a picture or two for each “stream”, down below.

What have I been doing for fun? I’ve been out on Wednesday evenings with a group of like-minded sketchers, visiting museums and I’ve been to see Roman art on Sundays, sometimes on my own, sometimes accompanied by a sketcher or two.

What’s been study work? Well, I’ve been reading up on things (Walt Stanchfield’s “Drawn to Life, vol.1” and Robert Beverly Hale’s “Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters”). I must admit, I could be doing more there. And, of course I go to Life Drawing evenings every Tuesday, I guess I classify that as fun, but it “should” be study.

The missing ingredient project is actually possibly about to take off, because I’ve got interested in the competition that quickposes[dot]com is staging. It means, I will have to make up a nice scene from childhood with figures, story, action and whatnot. I’ve got a number of thumbnails on the go.

In summary, don’t just practice, and likewise don’t just try to have fun, find a good balance between fun, practice, study and project work (perhaps even take your sister up on that request to draw her dog or cat).

To finish off, here a selection of my Oktober[sic.] inks.

Fun:

Project?

Study:

Practice:

Pink about it

Sep 27, 2016Stuart3 Comments

Not many drawings to show from tonight’s Life Drawing session.

Arriving at the drawing session, I had on me my Kuretake No.8 brush, 2 Faber Castell Polychromos pencils and a pre-painted spread of a A5 sketchbook.

I’d decided to switch tools to give me that little nudge to move from the comfort zone again. Still, I allowed myself access to the coloured pencils which I am very comfortable with … so comfortable that I need to consider leaving them at home in future.

We had a few 10 minute poses, a “draw from memory pose” and ended with a “please exaggerate a part of the model” (let’s see if you can tell which one goes with that last pose call).

Not a very exciting result tonight, but very relaxing and not in the least disappointing, if I say so myself.

Nude-less Nude Night (NlNN)

Image Sep 13, 2016Sep 20, 2016Stuart6 Comments

Just got back from … (you should know the rest by now) … Life Drawing Evening Class!

And … oh wonder of wonders … the model didn’t show up.
I mean … why go to Nude Classes and have no nude there?
I seriously considered taking my shirt off, but didn’t bother mentioning it.
(Thank the maker! I was embarassing enough tonight, without acting like the narcistic d**khead I obviously am.)

Still – even w/o me baring my chest – we had a very enjoyable evening drawing our mentor … who of course couldn’t come round and watch his fledglings’ attempts at sketching the human figure.

Three students were brave enough to climb the stage and stand their 15 minutes.

I had chosen the following weapons for tonight:

Lamy Safari “F” nib with Royal Blue ink
Seawhite of Brighton, A5 sketchbook (my “show-off” book)
preselection of Polychromos colour pencils (grey, 2 blues, red, magenta, green, flesh, pink)

And then the following pictures appeared one after another … any likeness with real living people is just coincidence.