Before I started to know about the existence of sketching, or realistic drawings, manga, and different kinds of arts. I wasn't aware that I was already doing it in 1st grade. I was just doodling and scribling on my paper whatever comes to my mind.

My first drawing that I remember

One drawing that I remember was an armored car with spikes on the bumper and a cannon at the top of the roof. That idea was from an apocalyptic movie that I watched, however, I don't remember the title.

How I won on our school program back in middle school

I got interested around 4th to 5th grade in middle school, and there is this drawing I made about deforestation or illegal logging, to give awareness and to stop cutting trees and firing the forests.

It is described as mountain with cutted trees and a vehicle with tank-ish wheels, sharp spiked blade like a chainsaw on the top of the roof and a smiling sharp teeth that eats the trees. That drawing was for our school program and fortunately I was chosen as the winner at that time.

How I developed my fundamental skill

When I became a high school student, that was when I got my first little sketchpad. Because I've been drawing on my bond paper and my notebook, and that was the main reason why I don't have enough space to write about our lessons, for the fact that, It was full of scribbles and stickman drawings.

I was obsessed on drawing eyes, I love looking at the texture of the iris, one of the reasons I developed my observation skills because it takes me couple of minutes to study the patterns, the curves, angles shapes, depth, and so on.

How I learned realistic drawing

When I reached my last year of junior high school, I started to learn realistic drawings on my sketchbook that my uncle gave to me as a gift. I got interested about charcoal portrait, for the reason that it has this distinct process, starting from messy composition to a detailed portrait.

Instead of layering the drawing shades, It starts from filling the over all composition or the shape of that object without worrying about the details and how dark it is. Then that is when to start tweaking for details such as the eyes, nose, mouth and so on. The final step is to add additional details like skin textures, hair highlights many more.

Things I have learned

• Hand and eye coordination

• Observation skill

• hand techniques

• Shading techniques

• Blending techniques

• Basic human anatomy

• Perspectives

Tools I use for my drawings

• Charcoal pencils

• graphite pencils

• kneaded eraser

• Blending stump and tortilions

• Improvised blending stumps

• Sketchpad

• Charcoal pastels

• Mechanical pencils

Some of my artworks

Looking back, I was just doing it as a habit, still up until now. I was just able to trace some basic shapes on paper, but now, not to brag about but, I can do some free hand drawing almost without putting some proportional guides, although it is not always that accurate and everyone also feel frustrated about themselves. I just want to start again, I have been busy about my school works and I don't want to waste this skill that I have developed for a long time. I'm just making my motivated by writing ths about myself hoping that it will help me to move forward.