Inside my sketchbook

I haven't been posting here much because I've got so much art to post and catch you up on that it's a little overwhelming tbh! I've been feeling similarly about Instagram - I hear everyone say about how it's good for engagement to post every day so I saved a whole bunch of work up, but I can't say posting every day has made a jot of difference to my engagement whatsoever, and being less spontaneous about it all has sucked all the fun from my account. I was scrolling back through my feed and I honestly think I was doing better before I started overanalysing it, so once I've caught up it'll be back to basics for me! Sharing things I'm excited about as soon as I've created them.

So this is going to be a bit of a catch up post!

I'm still getting used to trying to draw backgrounds and perspective and stuff, but also in a more simplified way. I don't know if it's because I draw realism as well, but when I draw a location I tend to get caught up in all of the little details rather than catching a mood or energy of a place and it's something I'm trying to work on as it's a style I really admire. I also think it would be a really nice practice to get into for my travels too. I drew this from a photograph and I was quite pleased with how it came out!

I originally wanted to digitalise this, but I also drew it so long ago that I've kind of lost all motivation and would rather work on new ideas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When the world first went into lockdown a year ago (OMG!) I had a ton of ideas, more illustrations than I could keep up with and so many that I wanted to colour digitally and turn into "proper" works, but I ended up with such a backlog that it began to feel like a chore and I've given up on a lot of them for now at least. I at least painted this one so the idea is still kind of there! I had wanted to incorporate some of their key lyrics into their clothing and background.

I kept working at my ballpoint illustrations, and here's one of Mika I did last summer before I went to Kyoto. Stations in Japan have all different stamps and I love how they looked in my sketchbook.

I realised I never drew the Cowardly Lion! I'm very out of practice with drawing animals so they're always a challenge for me.

Of course I've still been drawing Aaron.

And the Joker too! I tried before to colour the Joker's makeup after I drew it, and last time I used Copics which turned out way too vivid and kind of killed the drawing. I still really wanted to try the idea though, so I used coloured pencils this time which I think worked out much better! And I did the blood in gouache to make it really stand out.

I had this idea of a friendly bear for a while, I kind of want to put it on a shirt? 'Goddag' is just a way of saying Hello in Danish, I'm trying to incorporate more of it into my work to show a bit more of my cultural identity instead of defaulting to English all of the time.

It was autumn and I wanted to draw something cozy! This is like, my ideal day to me. Books, candles, music, cookies, and a raging storm outside. If you zoom right in the books on the shelf are some of my favourites I grew up with!

Branching out in my musicals, ey? XD Les Mis is one of my original musical obsessions way back and I wanted to show it a little love. I tried to blend Enjolras's stage and movie costumes - I had to do the vest because it's iconic, but I prefer the movie's pants and blond wig.

I have a whole bunch of Oz illustrations too, but I'll add them to their own post!

Inside my sketchbook

Like I said in my last post, I've been drawing a lot in my sketchbook lately and thought I'd offer a peek at what I've been working on. Not all of it's finalised, much of it is simple sketches that are waiting to be digitally coloured, but I always enjoy 'behind the scenes' glimpses so figured I'd offer one!



Y'all know how I love to draw a ballpoint portrait of Aaron Tveit 😅 I found this photo saved on my iPad when I was clearing it out and realised that I'd meant to draw it way back. I actually find drawing portraits a good way to unwind, and I like to stay on top if my skills. In the past I've either focused exclusively on realism or exclusively on illustration and then gotten frustrated when I've lost skills in the other.

I am often asked if I'll do portrait commissions, and I'm afraid the answer will always be no. It's something I do for fun and it's difficult for me to put my heart into it when I don't care about who I'm drawing, which is why I draw the same people over and over. It's also why I stopped sharing my portraits for a long time as I didn't want to create a business of it and get stuck drawing strangers.



Dmitri and Anya from Anastasia, they'll be coloured digitally at some point. I wanted them to be similar in style to my Wicked illustrations, with the background elements specific to each character. Dmitri is in St Petersburg, and supposed to look like he's casually playing with the music box by throwing it from hand to hand - I was really stumped with how to pose him, and this was the first character illustration I'd done like this in a long while so I felt like I was getting back into it. Anya came much easier, and it shows in her more natural posing and flow. Pooka is perhaps too small, but eh. There's the sign in the background where she meets her crossroad - one pointing to St Petersburg, one to the Fishermans Market where she's been given a job out of the orphanage. It's a pivotal moment for her, so it felt like the perfect backdrop. I just changed the writing to Cyrillic because that's the one thing that bothers me about the movie - in all of the Russian locations, all of the background writing is in English and I think it's details like that that can really solidify a setting - or not in this case. Especially as I watch the film with Russian audio so it's even more jarring!



I got some new Copic markers and wanted to try them out, so I sketched this based on a publicity photo of the London production of Wicked. I love this scene in the musical because it's so short but so telling of how the distance between Glinda and Fiyero is growing.



Another sketch to be coloured digitally. I've always liked the movie The Little Mermaid but it's never been my favourite, but it's really growing on me lately. I'm at a point in my life that I can relate to Ariel more, and that feeling of being stuck and yearning for change and the freedom to be who you want to be. Which isn't a million miles from why I relate so strongly to Elsa, who is my favourite, and they're both obviously Hans Christian Andersen characters so I thought I'd create a little homage to that.



Hans looking suitably pissy which is my favourite way of drawing him, and I tried to add some little historical details to his outfit as I've fallen down a rabbit hole of watching historical costumers on YouTube and those videos showing what the princesses would look like historically accurate. No one ever does the princes or focuses on male historical fashion which is a shame I think, I'm almost tempted to try and perhaps create a little series of them myself. And a ballpoint portrait of Mika, my other fave who I draw all of the time! I want to try and translate him to my illustrative style some time and see how it works, as he is very distinctive so wouldn't be that difficult.




I don't know if I've mentioned about it on this blog before, but when I was doing my foundation degree I created a whole illustrated book of the original tale of The Snow Queen. I found the original book I'd created when I was clearing through stuff to move and it felt a bit cringey to me now as my skills have developed so I decided to update it. I'll go into it all in more detail when I've finalised and digitally coloured some of them, but these are some of the rough sketches I'm working with right now. I'm super excited for how they're coming out! I obviously don't want it to reference Frozen as it's such a different story even if it is what inspired it, but as I'm such a fan of Frozen I have thrown in little 'easter eggs' here and there, such as basing elements of Kai on my design of Hans - I made a big post on my personal blog about how I feel Hans is an interpretation of Kai anyway, so it fit. It won't be too obvious where you think "OK that's Hans", but enough to link the two when you think about it.



I've been drawing so much that I had to buy a new sketchbook! I've nearly finished my Leuchtturm, which is a shame as they're my brand of choice and not easily available here. I picked up a Handbook Travelogue Journal which I've been intrigued about for a while, and got the watercolour edition as I'm really enjoying painting lately. I've already begun, but you'll see more of that soon!

Inside my sketchbook

Well, I didn't mean to leave it quite this long! Happy 2020! I've actually been working on my artwork a lot this year, I'm about a third of the way in to my sketchbook already just from drawing so much! But it's not really anything 'sellable' in that it's either work done purely for myself, or things to be completed at a later date, but I thought I'd give a peek anyway. It's something I always feel a bit weird about, as on the one hand I want to share work I'm proud of, but on the other social media is such an odd place now in that everything has to be "professional" and "on brand" and it doesn't leave any room to just play. It feels like long gone are the days where I'd just share a picture of something I've made just for the excitement of having created it, and that's a shame. I don't always draw the exact same way all of the time, it'd be boring, and sometimes I like to draw stuff just for me. And that OK! It's actually very healthy.

I've been drawing a lot of portraits in ballpoint pen, and I really feel I've hit my stride with it. I only began drawing with a ballpoint last year, so I'm enjoying seeing my own progress and confidence grow with the medium. Before I was terrified of not being able to erase and making a mistake, but it's not that scary anymore! I've really got to grips (heh) with holding the pen and being able to make different marks with it. It's funny to think that when I drew pencil portraits I'd have about 8 different grades of pencil, now I just use the same 80p Bic for the whole thing. I love drawing these as they're a great way to just switch off my brain, I'll put a movie on in the background and have one eye on that while I work. Plus they're a great way of working on my fundamental drawing skills. They are all Aaron Tveit and Mika because I am unashamed XD









I've also been really into The Prince of Egypt lately. It's long been one of my favourite movies and I've been excited about the stage adaptation since I first heard of it as I firmly believe it's got one of the best soundtracks of any movie, ever. Unfortunately the stage adaptation wasn't great, but it did inspire me to draw the characters from the movie and see how they look in my style. I drew Joseph from Joseph: King of Dreams too, which had the same creative team and I also love. I want to photograph these sketches and play around with them in Procreate at some point, so you might see them again in full colour further down the line. It gave me an interesting challenge of drawing facial hair which I usually avoid, but I think it came out OK? I'm always very conscious of trying to draw different ethnicities too, especially as these movies are so great for portraying people of colour without white washing. It's something I'm always conscious of when I draw Fiyero too as he is canonically not white and I generally focus on nose shape and bone structure, but I'm never sure how well it comes across. It's something I'm very aware of though and working on! I don't want to be one of those artists that just paints characters a different shade of brown and calls it a day.




When sorting through things I found an old sketchbook from about 10 years ago or so, and it's funny seeing how I used to work compared to now, I think old me would be pretty mind blown to see my current sketchbook! It was mostly half finished sketches, and what was finished I was clearly working within my limitations and not pushing myself. I didn't keep the sketchbook as honestly most if it was embarrassing and I don't see the point in holding on to everything I ever drew (do you have any idea how much stuff I'd have to keep for that??) but I did tear out a few pages of things I thought had potential. I've re-sketched them and plan to work on them on my iPad when I have the time. I love that my themes of what I drew haven't changed all that much!

Recent artworks

I've been drawing a lot of portraits lately as I find it fun and it's good to draw things for me, but it's something I always feel a little unsure of sharing as although I'm proud of them I don't want people thinking it's part of my 'brand' as an illustrator. It's a whole side of art business that I struggle with honestly, as it feels nowadays like you have to have your one aesthetic and stick to it but I'd get so bored! And honestly I think it's good to be versatile. But saying that, I don't think I'd ever want to do portraits as commissions as it'd no doubt lead to drawing people I don't care about which wouldn't be fun for me, so I keep them as just a hobby.

I used to draw portraits quite a lot with pencils, but because I'm a perfectionist I hated them if they weren't super photo realistic and it really sucked the fun out of it. So last year I began drawing them with ballpoint pens, something that scared me silly at the beginning as it's so permanent so there's obviously no way of erasing if you make a mistake, but it's actually really liberating and I feel I've learnt a lot from being forced to work with my mistakes. Because these are just for fun, they're all in my sketchbook. The top is Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, as it's turned out to be my favourite movie of the year and I'm lowkey obsessed. Second is Mika which is mt favourite of the three (look at those pinstripes!!), and lastly is Aaron Tveit which whilst I like, I had issues with my pen blobbing while I was drawing it (why do they do this though??)


And here's two other illustrations I've been working on. Above is from the Broadway adaptation of Moulin Rouge, and it's how they end Act 1 with Elephant Love Medley. I'm not keen on how the song has been reworked honestly, but visually it's amazing, and I had fun trying to translate specific people into my art style whilst still making it look like them, as usually I draw fictional characters so likeness isn't so important.


And this is from the finale scene of Wicked, and uh, spoiler alert? But Fiyero gets turned into the Scarecrow and I've always felt like he gets vastly overlooked within fan circles when this is a huge thing he goes through and a major sacrifice. I've always felt particularly attached to Fiyero though after reading the novel, his character is a lot more developed in that so I guess if you haven't read it it's easy not to care about what happens to him as he doesn't have a lot of stage time. This is actually a reworking of an art piece I did a year ago, which was in the midst of when I was finding my style, and because I was working on so much artwork at that time it felt outdated for how I was working even then. I really loved the concept though, and knew I wanted to revisit it at some point so I'm glad I now have a version to be proud of and feels more cohesive with my body of work.

Completing Inktober

I've completed Inktober! I can't quite believe it to be honest, I didn't actually have much hope that I'd complete the whole month. I figured I'd manage to keep up with the first week then fall behind, get overwhelmed, and quit. And I didn't! And what's more, I've really enjoyed my Inktober experience. Like I explained in my previous post, I haven't technically done Inktober 'properly' - I ignored the prompt list for two thirds of the month, and I've worked in more mediums than just ink (but I did mostly use ink). But mastering ink was never my goal, sticking to a prompt list was never my goal and was only there to fall back on. My goals were to simply draw every day to get back into a more productive workflow and just see where that took me, and hopefully through the act of drawing every day to become less of a perfectionist with my work. And now I'm at the other end of it looking back, I thought I'd share what the experience has taught me, along with a selection of the pieces I've created.

Top: 04 + 05 - Pruitt from Big Sky | Bottom: 02 - Inktober prompt 'mindless'

The biggest lesson of all this month was simply that sitting down to draw doesn't have to be a big deal. Often I'll procrastinate opening my sketchbook as I only have an hour or so and feel like that's not enough time, but I've realised that it is more than enough so long as I use that time wisely. I've also realised that even if I don't feel like drawing when I begin, I will once I actually start. And because drawing is no longer such a big deal, it's resulted in me drawing more. I've knocked out two portraits this month, which is usually something I'd think about for about a week prior and feel like I had to set aside a full day to create, but I just got on and did it and I really enjoyed the process. I guess I'm just learning to let go and doodle better instead of only drawing full-blown illustrations, and that's definitely a good thing!

07 + 08 - Inktober prompts 'enchanted' and 'snow'

Because my drawing time had been so sporadic and it had usually been a few weeks since I last drew anything, I'd always start by feeling rusty and unsure of my abilities and so wasted time warming up. This not only ate into my drawing time, but it also meant that I had to come up with ideas for a warm up sketch on top of what I already wanted to draw, and the whole process resulted with me feeling exhausted before I'd even begun. Getting into the habit of drawing every day has definitely loosened me up, and because of this ideas have been coming much more freely as I can just jump straight in with whatever I want to do. I didn't end up using too many of the Inktober prompts as they were only there for days I got stuck, and I didn't end up having many of those because the more I was drawing, the more ideas I was having, and because my work was looser I was able to crack out more ideas than I ever felt possible.

Top: 14 - Inktober prompt 'dragon' | Bottom: 17 + 18 - Joker inspired illustrations

I did find myself struggling for ideas here and there, but during those times I allowed inspiration to come from life and the things around me instead of going looking for ideas and becoming frustrated. For example, the Joker movie gave me a lot of inspiration this month as I absolutely loved it and wanted to draw fan art. And by allowing myself to draw things that I cared about, I wanted to draw more and more rather than feeling like I was only drawing because I had to. I'm really glad I decided to exclude social media presence from my challenge too, as that allowed me to be completely self-indulgent with what I was creating without any judgement!

I think the biggest surprise for me throughout this month is just how much work I've managed to create, which I know sounds a little silly as it was obvious from the very beginning that I'd have around 31 pieces of art if I managed to complete it, but saying that versus physically seeing that work in my sketchbook is an entirely different kettle of fish. I've never filled out a sketchbook at this speed, and it's an exhilarating feeling! I'm used to flicking back over my sketchbook and seeing work I've created months ago, not weeks or even days ago! I also like how it's helping me keep track of time. Often months pass by in a flash and I wonder where the time has gone, but I feel October has gone at a much slower pace as every single day I've been taking note of the date and been fully present as a result. And as someone who suffers with severe anxiety, that's been a really nice side effect and helped my mental health a lot!

Top: 20 - reference of vintage ballet dancers from Pinterest. 21 - Inktober prompt 'treasure'
Bottom: 24 - Illustration inspired by Joker

Parts of Inktober have definitely been a little stressful at times, but it was entirely self-inflicted. Part of the draw of the challenge for me was to fill up a good chunk of my sketchbook quickly, and that was actually a good drive as I was actively measuring my progress by how much I'd completed. But it also meant that I was getting a bit stressed when I had to miss days as I wasn't filling my sketchbook fast enough, and the pressure I put on myself to draw every day meant that other hobbies and interests had to be put aside.

I really want to continue drawing after October. Not every day, but I've shown myself what I can do and I don't want to lose these good habits that I've built. I'm a little nervous I'll run out of ideas, but I'd rather cross that bridge if and when I come to it! Plus I have a whole heap of things I want to digitally colour and turn into proper illustrations from all of this, so there's always that too!

Top: 25 - An OC. 26 - Fiyero inspired (I drew a lot of scarecrows, I guess I was inspired by autumn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Middle: 27 - Autumn inspired motifs, and practising Cyrillic
Bottom: 27 + 28 - Joker inspired illustrations. I said there was a lot!

Aaron Tveit

I've been experimenting with drawing with a simple Bic Original Fine ballpoint pen, and really enjoying it! I was originally inspired by a video by DrawingWiffWaffles where she mentioned that she went through a period of only drawing with ballpoint pen and she felt it helped her to improve her work due to the permanence of the marks forcing her to be more light handed with her sketching. It makes a lot of sense, right? I've also felt heavily inspired by TheGothicAlice's sketchbook tours (and I kind of credit her with getting me out of my art block tbh, whenever I feel uninspired I rewatch those videos and it reminds me of my purpose for drawing in the first place). TheGothicAlice does a lot of pen work too, often portraits, and as I've drawn a lot of portraits in the past and it's something I'm comfortable doing I figured trying it in ballpoint pen would make it a new challenge for me.

The first time I sat down to draw with the pen I was suddenly terrified of getting it wrong (which is pretty silly, it's only in my sketchbook and it's only experimentation anyway). The issue was I'd never used a pen for anything other than writing and outlining and didn't really know how to make it do anything else. So I did what I usually do in these moments and turned to YouTube for instruction and discovered Alphonso Dunn's channel - this guy is not only an incredible artist, but I really love his no frills approach. The trouble with YouTube is there's too many tutorials by people who don't know how to teach and too busy trying to be a personality, so you end up just watching them do the thing and feel no more knowledgeable at the end of it than before you watched it. Alphonso really explains what he's doing, and also the why and the art theory behind what he's telling you so it makes sense and you end up with the background knowledge to be able to transfer the skills to your own work.

Basically I entirely credit this guy with teaching me the skills to create this portrait. Also this is the second ever portrait I've drawn with a ballpoint, so I'm pretty proud of it just for that. My first one is a bit of a mess in comparison, but it obviously paid off as an experiment - which is why it's so important to create imperfect art.