Sketchbook

Like mentioned in the "how I paint" section, when taking photographs of my art nouveau studies from one of my sketchbooks, I realized that it would be great to have a sketchbook section on this website again and fill it up, bit by bit, with pages from my sketchbooks.

So I am launching the sketchbook section now and am filling it with some first pages. All pencil on paper. ^_^

Some stuff about my sketchbook(s):

I am not too specific with what kind of sketchbook I use. I have a bunch of different ones, and I choose which one to work with and with what materials (pencils, colored pencils, copics, inks, water colors, and sometimes acrylics) based on vibes. In some there are mainly life drawings of people and animals. Then I've got some that feature a lot of studies from anatomy books where I tried to learn all the bones and muscles. I had a phase when I wanted to do everything with black ink. And another were the option to erase stuff became too boring so I only worked with colored pencils that are eraser resistent.

Then I have a variation of smaller sketchbooks that I might carry around to sketch ideas in them. I used them, for example, when I was working in the film business. Prodrucers were having a meeting to discuss a new idea they wanted to pitch, and I sat with them and made pencil sketches. I also did all storyboard drawings I ever made in my sketchbooks.

When we worked on shows that had historical themes, I would use my sketchbooks to make drawings of clothes from that time (researched in history books about clothes from different eras) and take notes on what was important about them. I could then use what I learned to design clothes for the show in question, which would later needed to be greenlit by the producers.

The sketchbooks I will feature here will not come in a particular "order". I have too many and I usually just take one from my shelf, flip through the pages, and decide based on vibes what I feel like sharing today. Since it all transports the same message, being "you can get good at drawing if you practice daily", I think it fits the theme. If people, for example on my social media, express the wish to see old drawings of mine, I can of course do a deep dive later and look for some very old work.

Once I share that work, I will let you know around which year it is approximately dated, so you get a better idea of how I have improved over the years.

We are starting with a nice sketchbook that mostly consists of anatomy studies of people and animals.

I studied people from life drawing sessions, photographs and anatomy books.

However, studying the real person in a life drawing session is where it all comes together in my opinion. Since you see the muscles etc move when the models move, which gives you a lot of vital information. I will later on also share a lot more drawings that I did in life drawing sessions.

The animal studies were drawn at the zoo, the museum, or studied from photographs. ^_^

When you find it too boring to do life drawing studies all day, but you want to improve your drawing skills, you can also look at all kinds of things and just draw them. ^_^

Draw your friends. Draw people from movies. Draw characters from animes. From games.

It's all fine as long as you learn something new from studying them.

For example, I drew several characters from games that I liked when they were just standing idle. ^_^ On this sheet for example, you can see my studies of Raiden from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

I find old animes very useful to learn how they dealt with resources. In this example I did some studies on the Zorro anime. They didn't have the time to draw detailed background characters. How did they solve this? As a solution, the faces might have looked very simplified. But still very readable. With people appearing in small groups, usually of three, that could come in a triangular composition to again read them better. Interesting. I learned something new again, yay! ^_^

To improve on your animation skills, you can also look at animated movies or animes that you like and stop frames. For example, of people running. Study those to learn how to deal with weight distribution and dynamic movement and to learn more about facial expressions.

There really is no limit to all the fun things you can draw to improve your skills. The most important thing is to get yourself to do the studying and the drawing! <3

(The last sketch from this collection is Raiden's face that I added some color to, later. ^_^)

Since we just talked about making studies from game characters to learn something new - I just remembered that I have a cool example. From one of the sketchbooks that mainly features work done with colored pencils.

First of all there are some studies of Connor from Assassin's Creed as he was standing idle and I drew his outfit and his massive back because I felt like it. (That game also taught me how to play Fanorona. Now that's what I call time well spent! ;B)

I also like the Tekken games a lot. I grew up with Tekken and am playing it to this day. And by the way, the campaign in Tekken 8 is awesome!

Anyhow, I did some studies of Jin and Lars. And on this sheet, you can see a drawing that I made of Lars to get a better grasp of his very detailed outfit.

Then I made my painting of him. Having studied his outfit beforehand helped me a lot with rendering it properly when I painted him. That was in 2010. I still like that painting a lot. ^_^

Today I stumbled upon one of my small sketchbooks that I had used to brainstorm various illustrations. The first one should be familiar to everyone who pledged on our Minotaura Girl Figurine back in the days. ^_^

You can see more of her here: Link and Link and Link

As you can see, these types of sketches differ from the other ones I have posted here. :3

Not only are they from my "I must draw everything with colored pencil" phase, they alo have little to no shading. This is because they were made to brainstorm illustrations that I later wanted to paint digitally so each sketch took between 10 to 20 minutes to draw.

Besides, when I am going to paint over the lines anyways, shading them prior doesn't make much sense to me. I would only work double.

There are certainly people who do it differently, which is absolutely valid.

And I might do it differently with future sketches, too, depending on my mood. ^_^

And now it's your turn. Pick up a pencil. Or a stylus. ;)

Image below is courtesy of 0homi_ and became a major meme in 2025 for obvious reasons. ^_^