Alright! My holiday starts today, so I'm going to pick this blog up and hopefully make a lot more drawings. I changed layout, to make it a bit easier to use and a bit easier to follow my posts for my readers.

The portrait: I drew another one of my friend Sunyoung, and I'm happy that I did. I had a lot of fun with it, both because I know she'd like it and because it was fun working on it. I feel like this is maybe the best one yet. It's between this one and the last one. I took some photos of the process. Believe it or not, by the first photo I took I was at least three quarters done. The eyes took the longest time, I wanted to get them really realisitic this time. All together, I think this took 2 hours, with maybe an hour going into drawing the eyes.

Because I took my time, I got a much better feel for what kind of pencil strokes make the best lines, and how to make detailed shadows by patiently layering. Still having a hard time getting the face to pop up. I still found the hair to be exhausting so I rushed it. And I took photos with my phone this time which is slightly better than my computer but glare and shadows are still a problem. As much as I'm happy that I'm slowly improving, I feel like it is a little monotone. Maybe I can experiment. Try charcoal instead of pencils? Maybe make a digital portrait? Coloured pencils? Or stick to basics? Do you think it would help to post the reference photo for each drawing?

8/100

It's been just over a month since the last one, but here it is. On a Friday where not much is happening, I stayed in and drew.

Happy with how it turned out.  The hair was tough, as usual and it took about 15 minutes by itelf. The expression is good, smile isn't as wide as my friend's actual smile. Does it really look like Elisa? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe go fuck youself? Just kidding, don't do that, that's my middle-school self talking. Thanks for reading.I will definitely try to make the next post and portait sooner.

7/100

Another little post. Hopefully I can do another one during the week.

I don't remember the last time I drew myself. Maybe middle school, maybe elementary school. I made this about a week ago.

I didn't pick a great photo for drawing the eyes, but it was a nice memory and I wanted to put it in my sketchbook. And it looks like me! I did well on the shape of the head.

I did this one a while ago and forgot to add it. It's my of a friend who I met here, but moved back to Korea. Not super detailed, but the smile is nice.

Portraits completed: 7

PS: I'm also gong to use this post to point out that I have another website dedicated to medical illustration. http://medicalillustration.yolasite.com/

I'm back 3 new portaits. This project didn't start out as I'd imagined but I hope I can get a few more of these drawings done in the near future.

The first one I just finished drawing, the second and third I did a couple of weeks ago.

First one is of my friend Hyejin. It doesn't look that crooked in person.

 Second one is of my friend Yunji

This one is of my friend sam. Not strictly a portrait, it's a picture of him playing guitar, but most of the detail is in his face.

A few things noted: 1) hair is really, really annoying. That's why it mostly looks like scribbles because it is just scribbled. 2) I need to scan these, taking photos sucks. 3) Is there some way to stop smudging while I'm drawing? it takes away from the drawing when there are smudges everywhere.

This is my friend. She's been a good friend and really nice since I came to Korea. I don't like how the face turned out, but it was a pretty hard picture to draw from. I think the expression is sort of accurate. It took 30 minutes, and I used a mechanical pencil and B4. I feel like phone pictures really kill sketches so if I can scan them or draw using my tablet later I will.

Here we go.

I've been thinking about what to do with a blog or personal website for a while. Some of the ideas that crossed my mind are a regular travelog, a more personal blog, or a webcominc, but finally I settled on something that I want to do the most. Challenging myself to draw 100 portraits is a good way to get better at them. I also have recently, for the first time ever, drawn a picture of a friend and gave it to them. I want to take that wierdness out for a bit, and be able to draw for people. I really can't think of many better gifts than a piece of art. But it's not just friends, I like drawing faces, whether they are famous people or strangers.

Let's see how long it takes me to go through 100. Maybe there will be a ahmeds1000portaits blog soon!