Xsk2026

[FalseQuill]

Once upon a time, I heard the following piece of advice in a YouTube video:

Make goals that [REDACTED] scare you.

I’ve made a goal for myself for 2026, and it’s absolutely terrifying (at least to me).

There is a certain artist I always admired (I’m still a bit embarrassed to mention their name, so I’ll refrain from it for now). By the end of the year I want to race past that person and draw something better than they could.

Is it realistic? Probably, absolutely, certainly, definitely not. But I’m going to try anyway. I always undershoot my goals by a lot, so the only way I’m going to see significant improvement in my drawing skills is if my goals are ridiculous.

I’ll be practicing daily and posting it here, and someone please yell at me if I don’t or if this sketchbook starts devolving into random nonsense (that’s what my other sketchbook is for).

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There is only one drawing that’s fitting to represent this post, so let’s start the year by introducing my greatest obsession and worst enemy:

I’ll spare you the details, but for various reasons this drawing is very important to me. What you see above is a WIP version of my 6th attempt at this specific drawing, with attempt 1 starting at the end of 2022 (don’t ask what happened to the first 5 attempts). I’m honestly sick of this and want to finally finish it. I started this specific attempt on 2026-01-01, and I will post a finished version by 2026-01-19 or die trying UPDATE: finished on 2026-01-13

I’ll post a second drawing, a remake of sorts, featuring the same original character on 2026-12-31 to act as comparison, because progress needs to be measured somehow.

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With that needlessly long first post out of the way, let’s get this thing started.

[FalseQuill]

(from 2026-01-01)

Day 1. Somehow after years of drawing, I still struggle with circles and spheres, so let’s start by practicing that (I was way too tired after new years to do anything complicated, so I wanted to start with something simple)

This was drawn by Drawabox rules, which means: drawing from the arm, no erasing and no CTRL+Z (also every circle/ellipse has to be drawn twice, in a single stroke). I don’t really plan on doing Drawabox exercises here, but they’re a good place to start.

From personal experience, my strokes look best (as in: most confident, least wobbly, etc.) when I completely lift my hand from the drawing tablet (the hand doesn’t touch the tablet at all, and keeps hovering for the entire stroke). The problem with this method is that maintaining accuracy becomes extremely hard, but that’s only a matter of practice.

[FalseQuill]

Day 2 (2026-01-02)

First some simple forms for warmup.

Concentric circles in perspective (no eraser/CTRL+Z). These aren’t exactly that common, but they tend to show up in some places (cogwheels, stylised eyes, magic circles, etc.) and they often give me trouble.

The straight lines are minor axes for the 2D ellipses (3D circles). It helps getting the ellipses aligned.

I changed the background from white to a more yellowish orange color to reduce eye strain.

Cyllinders (again no eraser/CTRL+Z). I feel like being able to draw these well is super important, they show up everywhere.

Drawing these felt physically uncomfortable (not in a painful way, just “my shoulder is not used to this kind of movement” way). I think I just have to push through it, and eventually it will become easier. When I try to learn a new song on a piano, it often feels the same way at first, and then it gets better.

A few quick heads. For these and anything more complex I will allow myself to use CTRL+Z and eraser, but I’ll try not to spam them too much.

For now I just want to be able to draw a quick head that doesn’t make me want to vomit (I tend to have this problem where the upper form of the head is skewed too much to one side, and I’m mostly trying to avoid that).

I should probably grab some references for these…

Some poses. Mostly drawn from reference (random photos found on Google).

I’m mostly trying to focus on making them flow well, feel solid and have reasonably sane proportions.

[eysselia]

Goal that’s scare you, that’s the first time I heard this kind of advice and it’s quite intersting. But thinking at it that does seem make sense, thanks for the discovery.
Good luck with your goal/improvement and specially with this drawing, I know how hard it is to have a specific idea that never can’t be quite proprelly draw and just can’t be tossed aside, so I sincerelly hope that year will hope you realise it. Or at least reaching the point while it’s not exactly that, it’s nearly done and you will know that you will nail it. On that note the wip look promising.

[FalseQuill]

Day 3

Some organic forms.

Bundles of ribbons.

It’s supposed to look like a giant mess. The more ribbons stacked on top of each other, the better (sadly my brain starts to melt at 3-4 stacked ribbons). If your head doesn’t hurt while looking at it, you’re doing it wrong.

The final step is to untangle the mess by tracing the ribbons on another layer. The lines ended up very messy, because I’m trying to avoid eraser and CTRL+Z.

Now why am I drawing all these ribbons? Find out next time

[FalseQuill]

Day 4

Hair practice, based on random photos found on Google.

reference 1
reference 2

Sadly this took a bit longer than expected and I didn’t even manage to fill 1 page, so I think I’ll continue doing this tomorrow.

[FalseQuill]

Finished hair practice from last time.

final reference

Some boxes.

[FalseQuill]

Eye practice.

I tried experimenting with some more stylized designs. Sadly doing things in color takes longer (and I’m lazy), so this will be all for today.

[FalseQuill]

More forms.

[FalseQuill]

More boxes.

[FalseQuill]

More poses.

[dragonscales]

The lower left corner says so much. Love it!

[FalseQuill]

Even more poses.

[FalseQuill]

Tried practicing clouds today.

reference 1
reference 2
reference 3

[FalseQuill]

More forms.

[FalseQuill]

More clouds.

reference

[FalseQuill]

More boxes.

Unfortunately the drawing I did earlier today left me a bit exhausted and my hand was starting to hurt, so this will be all for today.

[FalseQuill]

[FalseQuill]

More clouds. Tried using some different brushes this time.

And more boxes,

[FalseQuill]

Skipped a day yesterday My messed up sleep schedule caught up to me.

Today it’s more boxes on the menu.

I tried coloring some of them to practice using the wet painting brushes (I haven’t used these brushes much before, and it turns out I they’re quite fun to use, so I want to get better).