After all this time on the course, I’ll be honest, I’m still nervous about sketching. We’re always encouraged to sketch regularly, and I do try, but life has a way of sneaking in and stealing that time. That said, it is true what they say: the more you sketch, the easier it becomes. But even so, I still get a bit of that hesitation every time I sit down to do it.

To help manage that, I keep things simple. Most of my drawings start off as basic outline sketches, sometimes with a SketchUp base to guide me, sometimes totally freehand. I then take them into Photoshop and use a simple palette to render.

Once I’ve scanned the sketches in, that’s where the editing party starts. I’ll often move bits around, adjust proportions, shrink or enlarge elements, and generally fuss over the composition until it feels right. It’s a bit of a time sink, but having a clean drawing base really helps the result – or at least, that’s the hope!

This year I made the bold move of switching pens (I know — wild times). But it’s meant that the scans come out a bit grey and soft, so I’ve had to do a Photoshop overlay to get the outlines to pop more. Otherwise, everything ends up looking a bit too wishy-washy.

When it comes to rendering, I keep it really simple. Despite having a Wacom tablet, I still use just one brush, normally a watercolour-style one, and build things up in multiple layers with different opacities. One day I’ll get better at using all the tools properly… maybe. But for now, I actually quite like the effect it gives. The layering creates nice overlaps, helps show depth, and adds a soft texture that brings the drawing to life.

Could these be better? Absolutely. Could I be better? Probably. But I’m mostly happy with how they turned out. They show the lay of the land, they’ve got movement and energy, and,  most importantly, they’re understandable. That’s a win in my book for now.