50/100 Sketches from Life

Been pretty busy this weekend but finally I'm able to post! This week I will share some snippets from my sketchbook "100 Sketches from Life." Also, if you've seen my website then you probably have seen a lot of these before.

It's been an enlightening and very fun experience so far, and it's great practice, too!

I chose a toned sketchbook for a few reasons. First, it's always been very hard for me to keep a sketchbook. The reason? It's hard for me to enjoy drawing on plain, stark white paper; it's very uninspiring to have this blinding sheet of paper staring at you. (For some reason I don't have this problem with loose sheets of paper.)

I realized this when I noticed I'd be more inclined to sketch on paper that already had something in it, like lined paper or a handout or something. Toned paper technically has something on it since it's coloured and it has these tiny little grains on it.

The other reason is I can use white charcoal on the toned paper, for highlights. This quickly and effectively gives the drawing a sense of volume and dimensionality. This can still be done on white paper but it is not instantaneous as on the toned paper.

For the most part, I've also been careful to choose objects which I find geometrically interesting. It makes the drawing much more fun when you can start off with basic geometric shapes and build it up into a more complex shape from that simple starting point.

There's lots of fruits and veggies too, they're quite fun to draw because of the textures and colour nuances in them. 

So here is a selection sketches from the first half of the sketchbook. You can also find some of these on my website. Enjoy!