Taking a pen between my fingers and creating small and simple drawings while listening to good music has always been relaxing to me. During this short time of concentrating on nothing else but the lines on the paper in front of me I forget the stress around me and let my thoughts flow freely.
Because I don't make enough time to follow my passion (and waste way too much time on looking at memes on Instagram haha) I decided to draw in my sketchbook more often.

I don't draw in directly in my sketchbook. I like to draw on a piece of paper and if I like the work, I'll glue it on a page. That way I only keep the nice drawings and I think it looks cool. Sometimes I write tips, proportions and techniques I used next to the drawing because my brain doesn't work and I forget stuff.
I also use the sketchbook to see my progress in drawing. I started to use it in 2015... I think.

So here are some of my favourite pages!




The first drawing I put in my sketchbook. It may look familiar to you because my blog logo's inspired by that drawing.






I don't know if you can tell but I freakin' love drawing eyes. My goal is to draw one so realistic people will freak out.




Here's a handsome green guy and another unfinished drawing that adds to the tiny pile of unfinished drawings. And by tiny I actually meant freaking huge.




And the latest page is filled with tumblr looking girls. Here I also used photos as "models". And oh wow, another unfinished drawing, what a surprise!



I hope you have a nice day!
-Sophie

Something I always envied certain artists for is their ability to create extremely realistic drawings. After years of trying it myself I've learned about ways to improve my drawing skills. When I was in Madrid the paintings of Richard Estes really fascinated me. Because he paid so much attention to details the paintings looked like a photos. Here are some of his paintings:


 Inspired by that I want to show you some tips I've figured out to draw realistically.

Details are everything

First of all, draw exactly what you see. And I know what you're thinking haha. But there's way more behind it than you think!

If you draw an eye, for example, think of every single part of it (no matter how tiny). When you look exactly at pictures of eyes you can see the reflection of the lashes on the eyeball, the structure of the iris, maybe tiny veins and a lot more. If you don't draw the details it won't look real because a real eye has so much parts it's made out of.
I practiced this by copying photos of eyes. By that I got the idea of the proportions and eye parts I had to involve in my drawings. After that I practiced without photos as guideline (especially during boring classes). Here are some of the first eyes I drew (the iris was drawn way to big):

Lines and shapes

After knowing to pay attention to details it is still difficult to draw them. Here you have to see the part of what you want to draw in shapes and lines instead of the big picture.

In art class we once got homework to copy a line drawing. But we had to turn the drawing upside down and copy it that way.
The task was really helping to see the lines and shapes instead of trying to draw a whole hand for example (without seeing the details).

How we had to draw it (left: mine, right: original)

The result (left: the original, right: mine)

Whilst drawing you didn't know what you were drawing so you had to pay more attention to the shape of the individual line.

Shadowing

To get the 3D shape the right shadowing is the most important part. If you're copying a picture it is easier because like I've already mentioned: you just draw what you see.
If you draw without a guideline picture it is good to know where the light comes from and where the elevations of the thing you're drawing are.
To avoid strokes I usually take a tissue, tear off a small part, scrunch it together and with tweezers I smudge the lines.

A drawing made of (almost) only shadows

Here you can see how important shadowing is

These "techniques" understandably won't work for everyone. This is just the way I draw. And of course you'll have to practice much and it'll take some time until reaching a certain level. But it's definitely worth the effort! 

If you were patient enough to read until the end thank you so much! Let me know if these tips have helped you :)

Love, Soph

Everyday life can sometimes be bland and colourless. I like to put a personal twist on things in my daily life, just like I did it with my school planner.

Our school provides us with free school planners. But lemme tell you they are free for a reason: Every corner is filled with advertising... even the cover is a huge ad. I mean look at that (well I guess the inside doesn't look that bad but sometimes a whole page is just one big ad hehe).

Because I just couldn't live with this terrible terrible burden anymore I created my own cover and put it onto my planner.

With a laminating foil I've covered the drawings to protect them because I don't how to treat my school supplies carefully with love.

How do you make your everyday life more enjoyable? :)

-Sophie x

Hey there!

So this is my first post about my drawings and I'm really excited to show you some of them. For each of the following drawings I had searched a picture of the motive in the internet and then drew the picture I had found. They are all drawings of animals (most of them realistic). To each one I would love to tell you their story.

This first drawing is of an owl... as you can tell... hopefully. I drew this when I was 15 years old for my grandma's birthday. She loves owls and at my grandparent's house there are some paintings of my grandma too :). I only used a black pencil for drawing it.

This next picture was a gift I've drawn when I was 15 for my dad's birthday.This time I reversed the color of the paper from white to black and mainly drew it with a white pencil. It was a bit difficult to draw because obviously I'm used to white paper (omg who would have thought). 

another owl (I swear I'm not strangely obsessed with owls haha)

Last but definitively not least: a lion. In art class we got the opportunity to draw whatever we wanted so I decided to go with something challenging. When I showed my teacher the picture of the lion I wanted to draw, she told me that it was too difficult. But guess who proved her wrong! Oh and also... the painting's not finished yet. 

So I hope you've enjoyed reading a bit about my artwork and maybe even got a tiny bit inspired. I absolutely loved writing about it and hope I did not bore you guys too much.

Love, Sophie :)