I’ve had a project in mind for a while now but know my drawing skills aren’t up to the job so I’ve bitten the bullet, invested in some basic drawing books and picked up a pencil.

I love fashion illustration and the elongated’ giraffe’ style body draped in wonderfully outlandish costumes, so my new books include both natural looking figures and more fashion-model stylized outcomes.

I started with head shapes.

I tried ‘fashion illustration’ faces.

I went full body.

That’s an interesting exercise, building the body up from block lengths.  I note that fashion illustration leans heavily toward pigeon-toes.

I explored another method.

What have I learned so far?

• Keep a rubber at hand!
• Buy a new pencil sharpener.
• Abandon illustration style faces.
• Stop stressing and loosen up the hand.
• Who cares if I use an entire sketch-book and fill it with rubbish?  So just do it.