As some of you may know, I like making visual art too. My preferred medium has always been watercolor but right now, I am more focused on using the pen tablet that I bought last January when I saw it on a flash sale (yes, I am an impulsive buyer and no, I am not proud of it).

Anyway, I think taking a look at my past traditional artworks is going to be a fun article to write which I really need right now. Why? Well, I had quite a tiring day tiring to make a program on the 8085 Simulator. I understand coding with the higher language but lower language coding puzzled me. Thank goodness my kind-hearted best friend is willing to help me out. I love that she helped me understand the lesson instead of just letting me copy hers.

Back to the topic at hand, I am going to share some of my artworks with you guys. Most would be traditional art so forgive the low-quality pictures because I have an old phone with a not-so-great camera. I do not see the need to buy a new one even though I have enough money to buy one because my phone is still working just fine.

Most of these artworks will have no or different watermarks because I made them years ago with no intention of being posted or shared with anyone else.

The Artworks and Their Stories

First I would like to share one of the recent artworks that I am incredibly proud of. I am doing this to effectively highlight how far I have come since taking my art journey seriously.

Kim Jisoo from Blackpink (How You Like That)

This is an artwork that I will willingly admit to admiring for quite some time before I posted it. I took incredible care in drawing this one and I think I did a good job. I especially like how the hair turned out because it came out looking so silky smooth.

I am sharing this artwork so that all of us can see how all "failed" attempts we made are actually helping us reach the goals we set for ourselves. I used to feel frustrated when what I drew did not turn out how I wanted it to. I would feel like a failure, and there were many times when I just stopped trying. I was so sure that the level I am at now was impossible to reach back then.

I am glad that I persevered even when I did encounter times when I stopped. I never really left the art community. While I was not practicing my hands, I am practicing my eyes and mind. I am training myself to observe everything around me which brought some understanding that I used to not have.

So now let us get into diving through my "embarrassing" sketches from my sketchbooks a few years back. Feel free to laugh at them, I also laugh at them sometimes while feeling nostalgic.

Just a quick disclaimer that the artworks from this point on were made in the past and therefore, I do not need criticisms on them. I know full well that they are the works of a beginner trying to learn drawing for the first time. Also, pardon the low-quality images, I do not have a good camera and I was too lazy to find a place with good lighting.

First of the many failed portraits

As you can see from this sketch, I had yet to figure out the proper proportions for the face. The eyes are too far apart, the hairline too small, the hair too voluminous. Also, I was still unsure how to shade the hair. I was drawing the strands individually instead of looking for the general shapes.

My tip for my past self would be to try and focus on doing a light sketch first to see how it looks before darkening the lines. I was also in a rush to finish this because at the time I was drawing with a mindset that the more I drew, the faster I improve. This is both true and false at the same time.

If you keep drawing again and again making, the same mistakes, those mistakes will become second nature to you. So the truth is you will improve faster when you aim to correct the mistakes you made the first time around.

First time using watercolor pencils

So I wanna skip this one immediately because there are a lot of things going on here and I don't know where to start. While there are a lot of things that are not that great here, I kinda want to pat my past self on the back for the color choices on the hair. I think the hair is the saving grace of this piece.

As you can see from her shirt, this piece was abandoned halfway through which is why it was left with the pencil streaks instead of being blended out with water. You can also see that I still badly need to work on my proportions, shading, and color theory in general.

Simpler sketch

This is a sketch made in a few minutes when I finally figured out that I like it more when I can just not think when I am drawing. I just wanted to put some lines down the paper and hope for the best.

Of course, this is not always my go-to method but I really enjoy making fast artworks compared to pieces that take a lot of hours and patience to finish.

I personally like this piece and for a while, I had this art style when I was drawing. Just simple lines and no shading, that kinda represents how I like to do things- plain and simple.

There were many drawings in between all the artworks that I shared. Some are sketches that I would like to keep for myself because they are not pleasant to look at. And there are some that are pretty good that I cannot share with you guys because those are sketches of some of the people I have talked to and ghosted last year. I do not want to accidentally find them here so I will keep those for myself.

After I making the last drawing, I was more focused on drawing my sisters and friends but then after some time, I grew bored of it too. So I turn to painting with watercolors.

As you saw from the title, this is part 1 of the look into my past artwork. For the next part, I will be sharing with you my watercolor paintings along with their stories. I will also make a separate article for my digital art journey. So all in all, this will be a three-part series.

If you find this article interesting and want to read more of my works, I made a list of my articles written last May. Feel free to check them out by clicking this link: https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/may-2021-articles-summary-59e3f5b8

I will also be doing a weekly summary of articles for June so you can look forward to that.

Of course, I cannot end my article without sharing my gratitude to the people who show support for my last article. Your support has been a strong motivator in continuing this path. Thank you!

@Eylz2021

@DM