Back in January, I was thinking to myself that I'd really like to learn to draw. It would have some practical benefits like potentially being able to draw concept art for my game, but ultimately I just liked the idea of drawing as a hobby. I doodled a few small things before deciding that I should challenge myself to draw something every single day for an entire month (4 weeks); [I documented the entire thing here](/blog/2026/0205), but spoiler alert: I think I succeeded in learning to draw and I am now able to sketch like I was never able to before!
Here are some of my favourite drawings from around that time, in chronological order:
<ImageGallery
images={[
{
src: "/blog/2026/0129/girl.webp",
alt: "A small drawing of an anime-style girl's head. She has a ponytail and is looking towards the left with a concentrated gaze.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-01-29</b> (before the challenge)",
"A small sketch (only like 4cm wide) that I drew with a ballpoint pen on pink paper. The fact that I was able to sketch this, without any prior practice, plus an intrinsic want to be able to draw made me seriously consider learning to draw.",
"Having learned just a little bit about drawing, I can say now (a month and a half later) that this isn't great, but it served its purpose of making me start to draw!",
alt: "An anime-style girl chewing on a piece of bread. She wears a ponytail and a sleeveless top.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-01-30</b> (before the challenge)",
"I drew her during a game of Wizard. I initially wanted to make her chew on a whole loaf but I didn't know how to draw that.",
"Wasn't really sure how to convey that her mouth is full either, but in retrospect, I could have exaggerated the bow in her lower eyelids to do so.",
"I like her eyes. Her head could be taller, actually.",
],
},
{
src: "/blog/2026/0205/13-2.webp",
alt: "A pencil drawing of a girl looking to the left. She is wearing a cropped loose tee and jeans, while her right hand is hinted to rest on her hip.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-02-18</b>",
"She's the product of me trying to re-draw the character I drew on day 1 of my drawing challenge, and I was really glad to see that I had actually improved!",
],
},
{
src: "/blog/2026/0205/18.webp",
alt: "A pencil sketch of a girl holding up a V sign with her left arm. She is wearing a long-sleeve shirt, jeans, and her hair is tied up in a ponytail. She is winking, the other eye is coloured green. Her body is tilted towards the right side of the paper. In the top right corner is a lightly-drawn sketch of the girl's pose.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-02-23</b>",
"My first character with the new style of drawing eyes I picked up from a manga drawing book!",
"I named her Emilia because she looked like a more nice and caring character.",
],
},
{
src: "/blog/2026/0205/21.webp",
alt: "Two pencil sketches traced over with a black fineliner. The left one is of a hand with a cube in its palm, sketched after the hand on the cover of Porter Robinson's album Worlds. Beneath it is an emoticon used on the same cover. To the right is a manga-style head with green eyes and wavy hair, meant to resemble Porter Robinson's Vocaloid mascot Po-Uta.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-02-26</b>",
"I drew the Worlds hand for practice and then decided to draw Po-Uta's head as well. I realised then that learning to draw gave me the ability to draw fanart.",
"I had never considered that possibility before.",
],
},
{
src: "/blog/2026/0205/22.webp",
alt: "A pencil sketch of a girl with a ponytail, crop top, and track pants with a slightly shocked look on her face. She is looking at her right arm, which is a cyborg part.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-02-27</b>",
"Possibly my favourite sketch from the drawing challenge, because she looks cool, but also because her design deviates from the other characters a bit.",
],
},
{
src: "/blog/2026/0205/27-1.webp",
alt: "A drawing of a girl with her head tilted towards her right shoulder. She is smiling with her eyes closed and is holding up a victory sign with her left hand. She has her hair in a ponytail and is wearing jeans with shoulder straps, and there is a scrunchie on her left wrist as well.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-03-04</b>",
"This is actually the construction sketch of a drawing I later went over with a fineliner and coloured pencils. However, I kind of prefer the pencil sketch.",
"This was my first attempt at a head-on perspective. I had fun drawing details like the scrunchie, the jeans, and the smile!",
alt: "A digital drawing of a girl with long brown hair in a ponytail. She has green eyes and is wearing a cropped shirt with stripes, an orange spaghetti top underneath, and dark trousers. She is holding her hands behind her back.",
desc: [
"<b>2026-03-10</b> (after the challenge)",
"ok i changed my mind on digital art. it's awesome.",
"My first drawing using Krita! I went with my usual methods but tried refining some things and adding (hopefully not overly misplaced) shadows too. I ended up really liking the ability to use layers, and colour in digital art just pops so nicely.",
"Initially, I drew the left arm in front of her body but later changed this to avoid drawing the hand.",
