As a form of structured self improvement, I’ve decided to take on a drawing challenge that I found online. It’s a list of specific tasks to complete for 30 days (though I’m not following the calendar so that I won’t quit) that are designed to help improve one’s art skills, in an intense gauntlet of art challenges. I’m excited to start this project, and to see how much I can improve my art!

For your reference, I’ll include the list of prompts that I’m following. Feel free to follow along with me! That would be really cool! I haven’t actually read the full list myself, so I don’t even know what to expect with this challenge, but I’m very excited to get going. I found this challenge on Pinterest, with the original post being from this Tumblr blog.

The first prompt is to draw a self portrait, to introduce myself. Easy enough – self portraits are something I like to draw pretty often to self reflect, so this should be no trouble!

I have a hand mirror specifically for self portraits, which proved quite handy for drawing this portrait. I do think that I picked a tricky angle and lighting situation, which made it a bit of an uphill battle and not necessarily the most flattering portrait, but I think I landed somewhere I’m relatively happy with.

As a bit of extra credit work, I took that self portrait and drew another, more stylized one using just the previous drawing as a reference.

I have mixed feelings about this art style that I have right now, with the bold black outlines and very soft shading within the lines. It’s certainly expressive and graphic, but the shading doesn’t quite feel right to me. I want to work on evolving my style. In making this piece, wanted to show a bit of a benchmark of where I am right now. This way, I have an example of both my life-observation sketching and my stylized character drawing.

My next prompt is to draw a figure with a reference, with the stipulation to include the reference. I think that will be another fun one. I’m looking forward to doing it, and you should expect to see the post soon!