Sunday Sketches

I’ve taken to breaking out my sketch pad during my three-hour church meetings on Sundays. The sketching keeps me awake and occupies my right brain, leaving my left brain free to actually pay attention to the sermons. It’s the most complex multitasking I’m capable of, followed closely behind by eating pizza rolls while, and at the same time, cooking more pizza rolls.

Of course, like all the best pastimes, there is some danger in the Sunday afternoon sketches. While I enjoy drawing other people, I’m paranoid that they’ll catch me drawing them, because… well, I don’t know what you all think, but if I caught someone surreptitiously sketching me, I’d be the tiniest bit creeped out. Admittedly, I’m prone to overreaction, but I still think others would find me WEIRD.

Because I’m totally NOT weird.

Not at all.

…

Nope.

Anyway, I like drawing the people I see in church because it makes me feel like a sniper, concealing myself from others, carefully picking my targets, and then taking them out while no one is looking. Besides, I feel that, more than just about any other exercise, this has helped me develop as an “artist”… and just USING that word makes me feel like I washed down my morning bagel with an enormous mug of pretentiousness.

Let me share my Sunday School Snipe-Sketching Sessions™ with you:


In the upper-left hand corner, you can see my first REAL attempt at drawing a face free-hand, without any guide. It looks… well, pretty terrible. I’d meant it to be some skinny guy, and I OBVIOUSLY failed. In fact, the dude barely looked human until I decided to make him a bit portly.

Moving on, I’d like to point out Guy #4. I saw him sleeping a few seats down from me while I was attending a friend’s church meeting. The man had the most FANTASTICALLY shaped face, especially his hair. While thick around the sides, it thinned out dramatically at the top. As it got closer to his forehead, it started fading until it was almost completely gone… then suddenly sprouted in a huge lock right above his brow. I couldn’t NOT draw it, it looked so cool to me. I’d heard that learning to draw would help me find beauty in everyone I met, but I didn’t believe it until that moment.

The next few sketches weren’t as impressive. Again, Guy #5 shows that I can’t draw skinny that well yet (I swear that kid is NOT as fat as that picture makes him look). Guy #6 is SUPPOSED to be male, but, to me, he doesn’t look it.

Girl #7 is a fairly poor representation of the girl that taught my Sunday School class this Sunday past. After I first completed the drawing – before I started editing the HECK out of it – I had drawn a fairly-attractive Asian woman. Trouble is, the model is NOT Asian. Not even close. So, yeah, a bit of a failure there.

Also, I still suck at hands.

Girl #8 is a free drawing – no model used. I was trying to distinguish between male and female facial features after the fiasco that was Guy #6. I wound up with something feminine looking, but the result reminds me of some of the poor quality animation you find in those Disney knock-off cartoons.


Model #1 from this page is my first real attempt to draw realistic hair. I can’t quite figure out how to do it yet. But trust me, this girl has pretty cute hair.

For the second picture, I decided to do something bigger than just a face or head. I tried to copy the speaker’s suit and tie, the pulpit… everything I could see. It went pretty well, all in all. I know I haven’t quite achieved REALISM in my sketches, but the cartoonish portraits work pretty well for me.

I’ve always been a big fan of the suit. Take even a plain looking guy, put him in a suit, and you ratchet up the sexy rating by ten points. Turns out the suit does the same thing in the sketch. Plus, a suit’s pretty easy to draw, so bonus points there.

The hand on Model #2 doesn’t belong to the same guy who modeled the face, by the way. He’d long since sat down. It’s still a terrible hand – looks all blobby to me. I think I may need some anatomy lessons.

The rest of the sketches are cartoon male faces – I’m still trying to figure out how to draw facial features on my own. I think I’ve got noses down. Eyes are another thing, and I hate, HATE drawing hair.

Which brings me to my third page of Sunday sketches, which I actually scratched out during a Monday night activity. The faces are pretty much… well, I think they’re kind of terrible, to be honest, if only because they don’t look all that much like the people who modeled them Still, as far as exercises go, I’m pretty pleased with them.

My main goal here was to work on hair – which I still don’t quite understand how to draw. I tried a new approach here with these three models. I drew the general shape of the hair first (and that’s as far as I got with Mr. Microphone there). After that, I drew in blocks for the major shapes and flows that the hairdos made. I added texture to indicate direction, and wound up with… well, kind of a mess, judging by the Gordian knot I drew on the bottom there (that was the back of some girl’s head, by the way). I feel like it’s progress, but it’s not done yet.

Oh, and, in addition to hands and hair, I can now say that I HATE drawing lips. The male model there on that last page looks terrible with the lips drawn in. Trouble is, now that I’ve DRAWN lips on him, he looks even worse without them. Bah.

Self-deprecation aside, I’m actually incredibly proud of the drawings I’ve made. Sure, they’re not perfect, but they’re much better than I thought I was capable of a few months ago. I feel six-years old again, getting so excited by what I’ve just doodled on a page with crayon that I want everyone to see. Luckily, I have access to the world’s largest refrigerator door – the Internet – so everyone CAN see exactly how awesome I am.

By the way, you should all try this pretentiousness I’m drinking. It tastes great, and it’s surprisingly healthy.