Down the rabbit hole...

Sometimes this is how it seems ;)

This meme has been around for years and exists with most "how to draw" things, but have to admit, sometimes it seems all too accurate!

Also - hyper focus much?  I started about 8:00pm, give or take a bit.  C went to bed I think 10:30 or 11 - I know it was before 11:15 cause I sent a text then and wondered at that point if he was still awake ;)   I took one break when C went to bed to let the dogs out and chill them out, and relocate upstairs where it’s quite and comfy and doesn’t spin the animals that OMG FUN THING SHOULD HAPPEN.   And shortly after that I finished and was thinking about whether I wanted to do some Spanish before reading my book and going to bed, and realised it was only a min or two shy of 2am.   Oops.  So I’m writing this post and THEN heading to bed.  Targeting 2:30 ish ;)

Was an interesting experience though.   I WAS able to follow the tutorial (if you're selective, YouTube is way more helpful than books that teach as per the meme) - I know it's teaching me to duplicate rather than draw myself and I'm okay with that - for now, because it's also giving me the basics and teaching me to notice details and visualise the world differently (squirrel note - it now drives me insane to see the dots that Nola's whiskers grow out of - I never really clued into how defined they are and that they're in rows before I tried to draw a cat  😂.  A degree of detail that has just never been relevant in my life).

In today's adventure though, The most frustrating part was that I could NOT replicate the level of black seen in the tutorial with my black pencil crayon that also broke EVERY time I tried to sharpen it; it’s prob a decade old Crayola so…. Fair enough.  I did just buy some new pencil crayons but for some reason that pack doesn’t have a black.  Sheesh.   And I was super disappointed cause for all the other issues with the fact that this was drawn by a complete beginner, it would’ve looked WAY better with a deeper black and layer upon layer upon layer wasn’t really changing anything.

SO - then I figured, what about a different medium?  Lol one of the books I’ve been entertained by suggests pens every once in a while.   I had some very real doubts about this and - consider how many hours were invested - it’s not like there’s an undo for a sharpie.   Honestly, for all the crazy things I’ve done randomly in my life, this one took the most internal convincing.  AND - I should’ve gone w my gut, cause I liked the original better.  Fail.  Lol certainly not tragic and actually looks better if you don't look too closely, but it's too obvious if you do ;).  But the end deciding factor was - it’s in a super cheap sketchbook and is not something I’m super proud of, does it really matter if I wreck it?  Well….  Turns out, a little bit ;).  But the rest holds true so some day, that’s not today or this week or next week, I will try it again and see what happens if I do the same thing with:

• Better paper (I never in my life thought I’d know or care about different drawing papers.  Although given how much of a difference *writing* paper makes to me, I can’t believe I didn’t clue in to that earlier.
• A really good superstar black pencil crayon (or 6!)

I am more proud of myself than I should be for testing out the marker though - I’d rather learn that lesson ruining something that was really hard but the end result wasn’t awesome than something I’m thrilled with.  I DID do a practice run on another page, but it wasn’t enough to give me a real feel for if it’d work.   My compromise was to take a pic of the "finished" pencil drawing before adding marker.   

I also learned that I have absolutely no idea what a “rubber pencil” is or why one would want/use one.  But it definitely did NOT do what I’d hoped it would ;). A set of 4 of them, all white, came with my other pencils.   On that thought - a few weeks ago I learned about different weights of pencils lol - I made it all the way through life without ever knowing what existed beyond HB or why anyone would care.   For the most part, this exact situation is why people might care lol.  But even that doesn't get to true black. 

Next step - colour!  Lol.  OR maybe 30 steps from now.  But some day!