These are a splatter of exercises I did in summer of 2024. Was trying to get some recent facial anatomy lessons to seep in.
Midstage
First shapes
Midstage
First shapes
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Summer of 2024 was a focused time of art learning/practice for me. 
This batch was hair.
The WIPs for the hair are such because the teacher at Paintable suggested the method of segregating the respective clumps and draw directional arrows for the flow of each one. (For someone who generally sketches hair like it’s a bowl of noodles 
… I found the tip quite helpful. 
)
(Also, some of my WIPs are edited - because I ended up erasing parts of them when drawing in the hair. So when I pulled that layer out to show side by side… it’s not necessarily what it looked like when I first drew it - but you get the idea 
)
These two were a little later
In general, on that first run, I personally think I overdid it with the hatching/shading. It works-ish, but I was aiming for a simpler look. And for some reason I decided to sketch each one with a different colored brush (which makes that one ¾ angled curly mop look like seaweed or something! 
)
Anyway! I look forward to getting better at hair and definitely enjoyed the process.
Hope you enjoyed the browse! 
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Thanks! Glad you found the tips helpful. 
They’re simple tricks when you look at it, but I never would have thought of them. Now I just need to remember them 
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Kind of like a cook in the kitchen… As your skill grows, the less you rely on the recipe.
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Thanks this is very helpful for me because i can’t do hairstyle for nothing
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Absolutely! Me too. Hope they help!
Hooray! I’m catching up with my old posts and have crested into 2025 work!
How this time was new material for me
There was a new (but wonderful) learning curve for me in early 2025. I had taken a class from an art teacher named RodGon who had an excellent course on basic anatomy. Coming from a place where I could ‘copy what I see’ but with no real grounding in the skeletal foundation for drawing a person… this course was perfect! It gave the maps and tips necessary for absolute beginners in anatomy (like me) to draw people from the inside out.
Humbly prefacing the following sketches with the warning that they were never intended to be shared 
, I’m giving a rough sampling of the trial and error and practice that I jumped into as I took RodGon’s [then] brand new course on basic anatomy. Some of it was faces, but a lot of it was poses.
These sketches were in March 2025
Sometimes, I took a pose to the rough-in person level.
Several tries later…
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More work in June 2025
With this slew of practice, I remember feeling intense frustration. I didn’t feel like I was grasping the material. In hindsight though, it was that classic magic time where you just have to keep pushing yourself to practice. 'Cuz even by the next month, the work started looking better.
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July 2025
I took a little extra time with a couple of these poses to take them to an almost finished state. In doing so, it reminded me to take heart and that the many rough sketches I’d been staring at for hours were not intended to be finished products but stepping stones.
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About midway through July 2025, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and stretched thin with all the different kinds of things I wanted to practice. So, teaming up with a few fellow artists (the benefits of accountability ) - we decided to do a sprint on just portraits for about two weeks.
As much as my distracted mind would rebel, I have to say that, at least for me, sticking to one focus does make a bigger difference than a merry-go-round of studies.
These were the first five I did, in order. I’ve included the skeletal and pre-tie down stages. While the final one is generally best, after the fact I can see in some cases where the rough sketch had the classic ‘better energy’. It’s interesting the learning that can happen just by taking the time to look back over what one’s drawn. 
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Really like the leaning pose of the seated woman!
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Thank you! I enjoyed that mood too. Makes me want to take that pic to completion some day 
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Yeah, that’d be cool! 
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