blue. s/her. 20s. black. pan. art log.
beginner artist on a mission. if you somehow found this blog in spite of all of my niche tags, i'm truly shocked. i can't realistically save every single sketchbook i own, so i'm making this place my digital archive so i can see an evolution of my skills in real time. plus i'm a weeb so of course i had to be on brand.
Sketchbook 1: East Blue Saga tag // reflection
Sketchbook 2: Alabasta Saga tag // reflection (reflection coming)
Sketchbook 3: Sky Island Saga tag // reflection (current)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Actually did some studying on value studies and watched some youtubers actually do theirs this time, so here is my 'post-instruction' value study—take 2 of that first vase I did but this time I did the shorter one to give myself a bit of ease and this time I used a flat brush to do the study
This still took a four tries across a couple hours though, the first time I didn't like the colors I picked for the study then the second I realized my vase was tilting and decided to start over again, only for me to realize there wasn't enough contrast to make it readable in the.... idk viewfinder? Navigator? Whatever it's called
So that was when I figured, it's probably easier to make something darker than it is to make it lighter. And this is my end result, or at the very least it's where I'm stopping today in terms of value studies. I'm glad I gave it the 1-2-3-4 try rather than just getting annoyed and stopping entirely. I really learned something from it! I was trying to keep in mind any reflective light... So ignoring the slight size discrepancy, I'm pretty proud of it!
It was definitely a learning experience. Now to take a break, eat something and then I'll do some anatomy studies!
Yep definitely a lot more readable than the first attempt
Before really diving into the value study how to's, I decided to try my hand at how I thought a value study would go. I've never done one before and me watching others do it wasn't much intel into what brushes to use etc. But I wanted to do some sort of 'pre-instruction value study' vs 'post-instruction value study'. So I'll be hitting the virtual youtube books to learn how to do one properly because I was really just clicking around doing a 'I think it's done like this' method lolololol we all start somewhere
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
New tablet! I know I'll want to move up from a small pen tablet to a medium-sized at some point, but when I saw that a wacom intuos was over $100 even for a medium I said absolutely not. But because I've never used huion before, I decided to try out their small-sized tablet to see how I feel about it in general before committing to buying a larger sized tablet from the same brand
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I still need to get my doodle in for the day but as of yesterday, I've drawn for 42 days in a row and that's the most consistent I have been since I decided to learn how to draw back in June of last year. April is right around the corner, so I'm going to go all in with learning enough to draw one of the characters of all time for his birthday in May
Learning one point perspective. The first two drawings are from yesterday, that damn grid was not making a lick of sense to me so I looked around and found a tutorial that was a lot easier for me to comprehend!
A reflection a couple days late considering I did this drawing on the 2nd lol. And this will be the first reflection post of many. Whenever I finish a sketchbook in the saga series, I'll make a new one. A friend of mine also suggested the fun challenge of making the last page in each sketchbook a panel redraw from the OP saga in question.
Since my last page in this sketchbook fell on my goat's birthday, I decided to do this one!
This was most certainly my rockiest sketchbook because brother was I inconsistent working on it. It takes 20 something days for something to become habit and so little for it to break while building it gjdnkgjdfng I started this sketchbook in June 2025 and I didn't finish it until March 2026 and the bulk of it I wouldn't say I made a lot of technical improvements.
First my grand idea was drawing everyday until the sketchbook was filled, then it was draw everyday for 30 days, but then I'd forget a day or wake up too late to draw for the day. Then I tried shifting to simply 'drawing consistently' instead and even that would fall through because one or two days of not drawing would quickly turn into 'two months'. Even in November/early December when I was close to filling this sketchbook I took a prolonged break that lasted until the middle of February, the 14th to be exact.
I also learned pretty early on was that, at the moment I cannot focus on both writing and drawing lol. I either hyperfocus entirely on a fic or hyperfocus entirely on writing; no in-between. I'm hoping this changes as time goes on and I improve since I'd love to draw art of my own fics as self-indulgent treats but we shall see. For now, I'm taking a small break from writing to focus on art. I'm still writing little by little in docs, but there probably won't be as many fics published by me this year and that's something I'm okay with!
Some time during this sketchbook, I came up with a fun idea of doing a 'saga system' of labeling each sketchbook after a OP Saga so I can "see around which saga I start getting good". For the second half of this sketchbook, hilariously enough I was rewatching the East Blue saga with a friend (the same friend who made the challenge suggestion).
So, fast forwarding to February 14th, I guess something in me decided to kick my ass into gear. It was time to pick up a pencil again because I wanted to see how much I could improve by February of next year!
So again, I was bringing back the draw everyday for X amount of days challenge. I mentioned before in a text post that I didn't want to do them because I wanted to avoid burnout but I also knew that if I didn't make myself, I'd just repeat the same pattern of drawing consistently every other day before falling back into 1-2 months of no drawing.
As such, there was no avoiding it. I decided on drawing for a month initially.
But then I changed it to add a couple more weeks meaning I'd end my little challenge on the 29th of March, meaning the bulk of this challenge would be done in my next sketchbook. Which was fine, I just wanted to draw everyday.
And for extra motivation, I bought myself a cheap Wacom tablet. But I haven't opened it yet. Once I've drawn everyday for a month, I'll do it. It's sort of like the prize at the end of the tunnel because I've got something to look forward to afterwards and I can work on my artistic self discipline!
So far, I've drawn everyday for 21 days! And I can say it definitely has helped. Before, drawing everyday was sort of a slog. Something I had to make sure I did, even if it was a series of 5 second armatures on a page so I could continue with doing something else I'd rather do. Now it's something I look forward to doing and take my time doing too. Even when I'm not drawing, I'm thinking about it.
I focusing heavy on the fundamentals, but I mix in a lot of just drawing what I actually like drawing so it doesn't become a chore. I'll keep on doing that, it's really helped me keep a positive mindset throughout this endeavor.
Now that I've finished this sketchbook, I've gone into my next one with high spirits. I've started doing some basics in perspective and I'm really motivated with learning anatomy in a way I don't think I was before. I can't wait to see what my next reflection will be like the next time I make one of these!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I try not to get too reflective in posts since I try to save most of my thoughts for the planned 'end of sketchbook' reflection post but I think it's fair to occasionally post my thoughts here and there. So yesterday I was watching videos of beginner artists talking about their X day art journey and progress, not watching with envy but more so I like to watch them to see exactly what they did in their daily habits
And while watching a few from the same youtuber, I think I noticed one thing they did in addition to just the overall 'learning how to draw' was actually draw things. Like this one youtuber talked about a period of time he drew his favorite character over and over again for two weeks and it was sort of a proverbial light bulb going off over my head that I sort of stopped doing that a while back while just focusing slowly on the anatomy book I'm using
So, while using references, I'm drawing characters I like. And to avoid a common problem I've noticed of people only getting used to drawing just girls, I made a self-imposed rule to draw the opposite gender to what I drew last time. Yesterday I drew Nami, so today I decided to draw Luffy
I don't really do self-imposed 'draw everyday for X amount of days' challenges anymore to avoid burnout but I do aim to draw consistently and not go weeks without doing it. So I'll have fun drawing more characters I like. I'm also just sticking to OP right now because I'm doing a style study during this time and Araki (JJBA) and Takaya (Furuba) both had styles that seemed really complex fjdnfkjsdnfkjsdfn Oda's style is a lot more simple in comparison so I don't feel as stressed when I look at his art for references
