Month: August 2025

August 2025 Review

Art Update

I only did a few art lessons this month. The gesture drawing class is just too intimidating to me, and very hard to do. I’m allowing it to intimidate me. I could just go for it, no matter how bad and awkward things are. But instead I avoid it! So, strategies for next month:

  • plan my day to try to get a lesson in Monday to Friday
  • if gesture is just too intimidating, do something more fun, such as the sketchbook class, or any easy class, this helps me getting starting and moving forward anyway. And I just might be able to work up the courage to do the lesson too!

Other than lessons, I did some quick fun art for episodes, just rough sketches.

Oh, and, I did a whole bunch of art for my Lore episode! See this is why I need to do monthly reviews. It’s done and out, so I forget all the work that went into it. I learned how to do some basic animation in Clip Studio Paint and used that in a video. Plus, I did all these lore sketches. It was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work.

Life Update

In August, I took a break from social media, so no browsing of Reddit, Bluesky, or Instagram. This made my month much calmer, and I’m surprised by how much. I found that a big part of my social media experience was reading something in the news, then going out to social media to see people’s reactions. I never went out looking for reactions to good news, of course, only bad news. And people’s reactions were emotional, but with no resolution or action steps to do something about the news event. And there was often unfounded speculation, or misinformation. So, yes, taking a break from that was refreshing.

I also experimented with watching less YouTube videos, at least at the beginning of the month. This was also a good thing to do. I made myself wait until Saturday each week, and then I could only watch videos from people I was subscribed to. I also changed my YouTube shortcut on my browsers to go directly to the Subscriptions tab. This was really useful! Then, as I looked at the list of videos from my subscribed channels, I really thought about them. If I wasn’t really into the majority of the channel’s videos, I unsubscribed. This leaves me with a short list of videos each week, which is great, and it’s all videos that I really want to watch!

I even took it a step further and challenged myself to do some art based on the thumbnail image, which was a ton of fun! I actually looked forward to Saturday to do some art and watch some cool videos!

I’ll post some examples here, it was a fun challenge. I dropped off on it mid month, but maybe I’ll pick it up again in September. It was fun.

thumb from Marloe
my interpretation of it! 🙂

Here’s another silly example, and I might actually use this concept for a future Skyblock video. My challenge was that I needed to create some kind of art based on the thumbnail, so I used the gesture and concept, and applied it to cats! 🙂

thumb from Ali Abdaal
a concept I might use in a future video

Even looking back over these is so much fun. It also made me more invested in the video instead of mindless watching. This was actually inspired by Ali’s video where he talked about needing to create more than you consume. So, in order to slow down my YouTube video consumption, I made myself create by making some kind of art based on the thumbnail before I consumed the video!

Here’s Ali’s video on Creating more than you Consume:

Lore of Red’s Base

This is from my Arcadia series, number 6-ish? I’m not keeping good track of the sequence, because this is really a one-off video about my friends base, instead of a progress report on my base.

I have been watching Red’s, Nuciee’s, and Duke’s videos and was really caught by Red’s mention of the plane liking belly scritches. It’s a plane, and should be inanimate, so how can it like scritches? When I hear a story like that, it really catches my imagination. And so, over several weeks, I kept thinking about the story, especially when Red added the crane. So I had this lore story in my head.

My whole life, I have had little lore stories like this capture my imagination, and it’s hard to let them go. When I’m bored, or can’t sleep, I’ll pick up whatever lore story is running through my mind and continue fleshing it out, figuring out the exact words to use. I have never written them down or done anything with them. In fact, it’s hard to drop them out of my mind. Sometimes they even get very intrusive. They keep rolling around in there!

But this time, I wrote it down. And beyond writing it, I made little sketches. And for the first time in my life with these stories, it quieted my mind! I could get the story out and it stopped rolling around in my brain! Amazing!

So then I decided to make it into a video. I spent three weeks learning animation in Clip Studio Paint and practicing for the ‘live drawing’ segments. What was fun is that I was able to get my point across even with just rudimentary sketches of people and objects. And it was a blast! I had so much fun filming this. It’s the first video I have made that didn’t include any first-person shots. Everything was shot with a camera angle in mind, and I was just a character in a ‘movie’. It was so much fun to make.

Then, I didn’t even want to post it, because I wasn’t sure what everyone would think of it. Mainly Red. But he was very receptive to it. And people seemed to like it. I was honestly glad it didn’t get too many views. I think in a few years I could make an even better story. But that’s ok, this was a wonderful fun video to make.

Hour 085

This card SVS Intro to Gesture Drawing.

This lesson is taking what we have done so far and trying some full gesture sketches showing emotions. This was REALLY hard for me. I just feel like I can’t get anything right, but I had to just keep going. Doing the flour sack exercise is very helpful to me. It helps me much more than line of action to figure out a way to give the pose more story and emotion. It’s a simple sack, and not much detail is possible, so it really breaks everything down to basics. And it’s a good warm up into this lesson. And everything is getting better the more I try. It takes time to warm up and relax into the concept. I probably need to so some of these almost every day to get into it more.

Next time I will start with flour sacks to get me warmed up and into the mood. Working on figures is very intimidating to me, so that’s a quick, cute warmup.

Clip Studio Paint using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes of practice to complete these images.

Hour 084

This card is from SVS Gesture Drawing.

This lesson is a different way of looking at the flour sack exercise, looking at emotion and story instead of just the torso position. We also name the pose before drawing so we know what we are trying to draw. It’s a fun easy exercise and adding emotion to it is fun, but challenging. I also did the One Line lesson in the same hour. This one also feels weird, but I think I’ll get more out of it as I keep practicing.

Next time I will think more about 3D space of the character. It’s more difficult with a front facing pose, but maybe I can pull in more dimensionality to it, otherwise it looks very flat.

Clip Studio Paint using Huion tablet.

I did 15 minutes practice and then 20 minutes to complete this image. (a little shy, but trying to get back into the routine)

emotional flour sack sketches

Hour 083

This card is from SVS Gesture Drawing.

This lesson is an intro to the class and the Construction Method called Line of Action. The most helpful thing about this first lesson is Naming the Pose – actually defining what you are going to try to convey with your sketch. So instead of just drawing a character who is holding their arm up, you are thinking about what the character is actually doing, such as pointing excitedly, or pointing fearfully, or pointing accusingly. I’m still trying to figure out how to draw a nice cute gesture, but I feel like it’s coming along easier.

Next time I will play with the canvas and pencil a little more, I felt like I couldn’t get face details with the current setup. Maybe I need to try A4 instead of A5 just to give myself more space with the same pencil. Other than that, just more practice!

Clip Studio Paint using Huion tablet.

I did about 60 minutes to complete this image.

sketches of gesture using line of action