This right here is my big purple box of old and slightly ancient sketchbooks. One of the books inside of this box happens to be a little bit more special than the others. It happens to be the very first sketchbook that I ever filled in my entire life, ever. Yeah, it holds that title. For 2.99, not only did I get 35 blank pages to draw on but I began a journey. That sounds way deeper than it was. [Laughs] but I decided to celebrate that said journey by redrawing every single page in my first sketchbook. So the video is going to be really long. I'm going to take this opportunity to jump right into it. 🎵 The journey to redraw the journey began with me finding a sketchbook. I had this one laying around that had a spiral bound and I realized if I like turn it on its side, it kind of resembled a similar shape. The main problem being it was kind of ugly, no offense to sunflowers, I love them but I like my old sketchbook better. So I actually took scissors and scratched the crap out of the cover. That way the acrylic paint would actually have something to latch on. The Ohuhu sketchbook's a little smooth and I was worried it would like chip off, so I got out some paints, I mixed up the little paints, I made a color that looked very similar to the original sketchbook and then I kind of just painted a circle on it. I also used some darker paint and created a shadow around the circle so that it kind of looks like the sketchbook is like popping out. Well, the circle is popping out from the sketchbook. So that's what I did and then I used like some multi liners and some paint for like the little logo. What I found worked best was actually a Copic marker in like a dark sepia color and I was able to create a decently opaque brown line and then I wrote sketchbook and yeah there it is. Well, I prolonged the inevitable, I don't know, I was having fun with this. Let me be. Alright, let's do the first page. Whenever I create a new sketchbook nowadays, I like to create a welcome page and it just kind of feels barbaric not to. I said it, so instead of drawing these three eyes right now, I put that off and I created a little welcome page with me, a little speech bubble explaining what's going on and my dog's there too. I did this in a very like chibi, simple style. It's just for me so I just did whatever I felt like doing at the time and this is what it turned out like. All right, now we'll go into the first page. Funny story, when I started this sketchbook, I distinctly remember that I just got in my mind out of nowhere that I decided I was going to be an artist and I thought the first step to becoming an artist was having a sketchbook, so that was the kind of order of operations that things went down. Then once I had the sketchbook, I was like how do I draw? So I actually went on YouTube and found like an eye tutorial. So I believe this top left eye was from an eye tutorial, like how to draw an eye. I'm not following that this go around. I figured I'm just gonna like recreate what I see. It would probably be cool to like redo the tutorial with a new, I don't know, fresh wrists, fresh eyes, fresh line vocabulary but I chose to just recreate the eye and um, no regrets, I think it turned out amazing. I also drew the other three eyes. I do have to say, I had a little bit of trouble looking at the original art, trying to figure out whether it was a left or right eye, so I just used an educated guess and went for it, since I am the only person in existence who would know the answer, no one can prove me wrong. Something I remember doing at the time too was like smudging the graphite with my finger. So I was sure to do that as well. This final eye did look a little wrinklier to me, so I really emphasized that fact just to make it different from the rest, it's unique. I think that's something going forward I probably need to practice, wrinkles. Yeah, great first page, really happy with this. I think they all look like eyeballs. I'm really happy with like the three-dimensional, three-dimensionality of all of them. It kind of makes me want to draw more eyeballs. So thanks past me, major success. Okay the next page, would be completely honest with you, I don't like this page, didn't like redrawing this page. There's better pages in this sketchbook that I enjoyed redrawing. Ay! But I did it. It's not like I cheated. And let me just say, cringing about what your past self drew has nothing on cringing on what your past self drew while redrawing what your past self drew, it's an experience. Next page. Okay so this one was one I was looking forward to. When I think of this sketchbook, this sketch specifically comes to mind. I remember I learned to draw eyes, I practiced the nose, I practiced the mouth, I was like let's put it all together, let's make a face and this is that face. If I was going to title it, it'd probably be "Girl With Wonky Bangs Looks Down Slightly to the Left." I mean it's her right but it's the left. Something really interesting that kind of developed over time as I recreated my first sketchbook was just the way that I redrew the sketches. Originally, I started by trying to just recreate it as I saw it, so like you'll remember like in the eye one, I put the eyes exactly where they were in that page and then with the mouth and the foot, they're like laid out exactly the same and even with this one, I wasn't sure how far I was willing to like push it to be different. I hadn't like come to that conclusion in my mind but you'll notice in the later ones, I start getting a little bit more, I don't know, experimental, changing it up a lot I guess and that's when I started having like the most fun because it was like doing a collab with myself instead of trying to copy, paste. So yeah, here is the finished version of this sketch. I'm pretty happy with it, the eyes are a little wonky but I'll take it. I still have like 30 sketches to do, so let's move on to the next page. This guy, alright so, this is like a doorstop we had growing up. It's like a little wiener dog, I don't know. Anyway, it's very intricate, it had the sculpted fur on it and I was like, well, artists draw from life so this was my first attempt at that. So I, I remember sitting on the ground by the front door, sketching out this doorstop. The funniest part is, I don't think that's what his legs looked like but that's clearly what I saw. Anyway, this time going at it, I kind of broke it down into simpler shapes like how I draw everything and I just kind of worked my way from the super sketchy light stuff to darkening it over time. I was very tempted to like go and try and find the doorstop but I have not seen it so unfortunately I had to just go from memory and there we have it. Let's go into the next one. After the last one, I decided to take a little break and so this is now the next day. You can tell by the change of clothes. So this page is two hands, you'll notice that they are both left hands and I am quite obviously right-handed, so you might be able to make an educated guess and realize that these are my hands. I was originally going to like try and recreate the pose with my left hand and then redraw it but I could not for the life of me figure out how I was looking at my hand to see that shape because no matter how I did it, I always could see something very different. So I thought I would just try and recreate the illustration as I saw it instead. So there's the like the dainty point and then the like go web go pose. This was like my beginning attempts at like experimenting to make the sketchbook pages different. I thought I could like cut out a sticky note so it had to like square behind
the sketch, it didn't work but again, it was part of the journey to get where we get. So let's go get there because it's more interesting. Alright, so this one is probably the first drawing I ever made from my imagination. Like a full-on character, so she's like a fairy girl with like peasant outfit. You can see those eyes from the eye tutorial, the nose from like, I don't know, not a nose tutorial but tackling it the same way I learned to draw eyes, I guess. Anyway, I thought the best way to go about this one would be to draw it the way I feel like I would have wanted to if I was able to at the time. Wait, talking about your past is so weird. Okay, so essentially I went about this the same way I draw every character, circle head shape, neck, shoulders, eyes, you know, the usual and I definitely like loosened up a lot of it, so I made the hair floppier and softer looking. Gave her face a bit of a younger appearance, kind of like softened that as well. I don't tend to draw like the bridges of noses, I do do it on occasion but I think I was trying to draw like a button nose so kind of what I decided to draw this time. So yeah, I tried to keep all the same elements in there similar. Top wings, pixie cut, headband. The wings changed a lot because in the original sketch her body's tilted so I drew the wings coming out the back, now with the new sketch, her body's not quite as shifted so the wings are coming out more behind her but on either side of her head, there's got to be a word for that, it's not as twisted. I also added a bunch of like glitter and stars because I thought it's a fairy magical creature, magic should just be like radiating off of it. Thought it was a good addition. Yeah here is a little fairy girl. Let's go on to the next page. I bet you can't guess what the sketch is going to be. I'll give you two seconds, it's a dry erase marker, um, yeah, everyone's drawn them these days. I tried to be a little fancy with it and twist it a little bit so we're kind of like looking down the barrel. I thought it would be a little bit more dynamic. I ran into a few problems here so I brought out a good old ruler and a vanishing point and I kind of just drew some lines to kind of help figure out where all those would go. It also occurred to me that a dry erase marker's cap kind of bends in and then like the little circle thing on the inside and once I had those like perspective lines, it kind of got a lot easier. I kind of just had to follow the rule I set out for myself with the ruler and that's when I noticed all the mistakes I had made without it, so it really improved from there. Then I just added in some text and boom, dry erase marker. Let's go on to the next page. I like to call this one creepy kid portrait. I distinctly remember exactly where I was when I was drawing this because I was out in public. Remember those days? And people kept walking behind me and seeing it and they're just like, like euh, like and because originally it wasn't supposed to be creepy but from all the reactions, I did alter it a little bit and added like the creepy shadow and just kind of emphasized it because it's like oh, that's what I meant to do all along. So this time going in knowing it's what I meant to do all along, I was able to emphasize it even more with the current skill set that I have. So you'll notice I changed the angle that we're looking at the character so now they're looking very creepily directly at us, so no matter like how you're looking at the page, it's going to feel like this character is like looking at your soul. I kept the like smooth slick back schoolboy haircut, the outfit and everything, that all stayed the same. Now, where it got a little creepier was the eyes, so I kind of opened them wider, shrunk the pupil, added some like shadows under the eyes to really just make everything feel uneasy and I guess unwell in a way to take the cue from the original sketch with that like dark shadow behind him, I thought it would be more interestingly unique if I made it kind of blobular shaped. So I actually drew wiggles all around them and then filled that in with like a little bit of shading So I filled that in slowly like blending it out with my finger to make it pretty soft. Then I took a eraser on the back of a mechanical pencil and I kind of like cleaned up the edges to recreate that smooth shape. After blending it, it kind of got lost, then I outlined the character with the white to kind of make it look like he's glowing in the darkness and then to even push that further because I was having a lot of fun, I created like these radiating starburst beams from his face and yeah here we have it, creepy portrait of a boy take two. Going in a completely different direction, we have the next page which is still a portrait but far less creepy. I would hope so, this is actually my grandma and at the time I had drawn this for her using a photo reference and I think I kind of like traced it a little bit and then added a little pizzazz. Definitely did not trace the hair, that would have taken forever. I think I just played around with that but yeah. This go around, I thought let's see what I can do without the photo reference and try and just recreate it from scratch. So going at it the same way I would draw any other character, circle for the head, you know, shoulders. Kind of just laying out where all the body parts go, is it body? Face parts, what do you say? Trying to figure out where all the elements of the illustration would go and when you're drawing specifically someone from real life, getting the proportions of the face, facial features, getting the proportion of the facial features is important and then also getting the proportion and distances between the facial features is very important. So I kind of focused on doing that and I think it turned out pretty well. She has since passed away so it was an interesting experience recreating an illustration since it's been so long since I've seen her. Yeah it was, it was kind of like spending time with her again. I tried to put like maybe a little extra effort into it too because of that. So I think it shows actually! I'm pretty happy with it, why do I always say pretty happy with? I'm like really happy with this one. Okay, I think it looks like her but also in my style which can be a very difficult balance to find sometimes. Like you can make it look too realistic which is like, that's a problem to have or you can make it like too cartoony and then it doesn't look like the person but I think it turned out very very well. I'm really happy with the contrast, like the areas of light in the areas of dark. So yeah, there's that. Honestly, I think the new one looks more like her but yeah, let's move on to the next one. This is another kind of tracing illustration I guess because the last one went so well and I remember being so proud of that illustration at the time. So I tried to like copy a photo I had of me and my friends...? I say friends questioningly because okay I'm the one on the left, the one in the middle was my best friend at the time and then the one on the right was just a girl, like I don't know why this photo was taken, like why did I choose to redraw this one? I think I was just kind of happy with it but yeah essentially, I kind of like traced out the area of everything so I knew where all the faces went and then I drew the faces without, just looking at the reference instead of tracing it anymore because this paper is really thick in the sketchbook and it's very difficult to see through it but when it came to actually redrawing it, I obviously kind of did it my normal way. The most trouble I had was with do I just use her name like it's written right there? I don't know if you can see it but we'll call her S. So with S, I had the most trouble with her face. I do not draw faces in this angle. Yeah, it was not easy. Redrew that quite a few times and honestly when I had chosen to redraw my entire first sketchbook, I kind of like flipped through it a little bit and this was one where I was like I don't know if I really want to do that one. It's kind of a lot but I took my time with it, had a lot of fun. I think the part I actually had the most fun with was drawing people in poses that I don't necessarily tend to, so like me on the left, I'm kind of like leaning over and I'm actually holding my instrument, you can't see it in the photo. I remember this like it was yesterday. Now here's something and don't get too bored of it. I drew a circle kind of like encompassing the characters and this is something I'm going to do a lot of moving forward because I later discovered that it really helps me center the illustration on the page. Then once I had the faces about where I was happy with them, I added in the camera and then the only two hands that are in this illustration. Wow, I got to draw three faces, I only had to draw two hands, that sounds like a good day, so yeah, here we have it, the new version for one that I was kind of "skeptikab'uhl" well, that was not a word, skeptical about drawing. I think it turned out really, really great and it might be one of my favorites but you can be the judge when you see the ones that start getting good. Okay. Alright, next up we have another illustration that was from the imagination. Very inspired by I Dream of Genie. I believe at the time I was watching it regularly we'll say. When it came to redrawing this, I was kind of like trying to figure out what was the important part and like, I think it's the head piece but then the facial expression is interesting so I tried to emphasize that, gave her more of a surprised face, oh, like that. This is one of the ones where I kind of changed a lot from the reference material. So I kind of shrunk down the character, so you can see more of the outfit because I thought it'd be fun to explore that idea. I kind of copied the little pattern I had on her hat and brought it down to like this, what do you call it? It's like a chest piece, shoulder piece, I don't know but I took very heavy inspirations from like the shapes that I had drawn even though I had not drawn many when it came to the outfit and then I also, for the hair that was poking out of the top of the hat, I kind of made it look a little bit more like hair then I actually added in some earrings because I thought she would look good with them. There was a lot of space there, let's use it, then I just added in the circle again. Look how it just like fills the page better. Then I just added in the braid and darkened the hair to add a little bit of contrast. I did tweak the outfit just a little bit more to make it look a little bit more like a genie. I don't know and then I gave her like a choker and that was that. I'm pretty happy with the way this one looks. The face, I don't know how to draw for surprise faces, I'll add that to my list but let's move on to the next page. So here is my original character Magna Girl in a bit of a, I think this was my chibi style, chibi style, you know at the time, big head, little body, stumps for feet, essentially stumps for hand with a thumb. It worked really well for me. I remember having a lot of fun drawing in this style. So there are quite a few more in this sketchbook in that style. Now I like this page, I love Magna Girl, I was really, really excited about recreating this and I think I got a little too cocky. Okay, I was like oh I'm gonna go in with my pink mechanical pencil, I'm gonna add in some marker, I'm gonna make it so colorful. I'm gonna make it awesome, it's gonna be great, everybody's gonna love it, I'm gonna be happy with it, it's gonna be like the best day I've ever had in my life. Can you tell that my expectations might have been a little too high and when that happens, that's usually where I start catching a little art block. Luckily, I'm a little bit more experienced now. I know what's happening, I can see it, I can catch it, I can move on, it's not like the illustrations are bad and I'm sure this is true for you as well, even if you think what you draw sucks. Another thing that I think I rushed into with this one was the colors, I didn't spend enough time picking the correct colors. She does have couple a couple variations of her outfit and this one doesn't work so well. I think for this age, she should be a little bit more pastel, when she's younger, it was a bit of oversight, this is when I noticed that I was like drawing her really stretched out which is a bit of a theme for the illustrations I made on this day specifically. I think it was the way I was sitting in my chair. I was like looking at my sketchbook, like down it instead of down at it and then I saw how like tall and lanky the character was turning out and I was like oh shoot and since I wasn't like super thrilled with the results of this page, I did add a couple extra magna girls, just kind of like filling in the space, warming up my wrist. This was my first illustration of this day. So I just realized I jumped in a little too hard and too fast into the next page knowing full well some of the issues I had with the previous silly one. I decided to take this one simpler. So I grabbed my pencil because it's been treating me well so far and so this first character is spider girl. I don't know, I made it up at the time. I had no idea about like spider characters. I kept this in a very chibi style as well, changed up the pose just to smidge. This illustration, oh I had so much fun with this but my camera turned off so we'll just jump to that, see the spider web, like I put a lot of time into it. Look at all those lines, oh yeah, there's my uh, spider girl. Now this second character, I remember creating kind of out of some clothes that I owned. I never wore them together like this, it's a look, not in a good way but I thought she looked sporty, so I gave her like a gold medal like she just won something. I don't know what I was thinking but it was fun to redraw. Alright next page, we're continuing with some more chibis because I guess I was having fun with that at the time. We have a cowgirl, we have someone, it's definitely inspired by a movie but I can't remember what and then the one on the right is Maria from sound of music. This was the final page I chose to draw on this third day and it kind of just to solidify to me that I'm like, I think I need to take a break now. Again, I had that problem where I was like looking at them from the wrong angle. I think I just had a bad case of the lazies and it would have been smarter to just not, you know? Sometimes it's good to push yourself, not gonna lie, sometimes you just have to but when you're doing just like a fun project like this, you really want the fun to be there and then so on the days of lazies, you should do something you've been putting off anyways. You're like I'm in a bad mood, let me just do this thing I didn't want to do anyway. In my opinion and this is my example and again, it's not like the art is like the most hideous thing I've ever seen. It's just that I didn't have fun making it and so I feel that way when I look at it. So we're gonna move on, we're gonna start this fresh. Day four, let's go, let's see what happens. I don't wanna like come out and say it but I think this was my favorite day. I think I had the most fun and I think it definitely shows. So here is my Indiana Jones girl, she's swinging, she's landing on a cliff, she didn't, is she gonna fall to her death? It's kind of hard to tell, I didn't draw the next frame so anything could have happened but when recreating it, this is when I was like, you know, what, I'm gonna redraw these as if I had the idea to draw this illustration on the left right now, how would it look? So I'm switching it up, I'm changing the angles, I'm moving the entire pose, everything's pretty much different and yet it's like the same concept and that was something I took with me and moved into all of the illustrations with and I'm just so glad that I did. Not sure how much of this I'll be able to squeeze into the video but I really redrew her legs, you know what, I'll be generous and say I redrew her legs probably about one million, three hundred and seventy-two times but it was worth it, you know? It turned out pretty well. I like the little background, I like the change of the clothes, originally she was in a skirt and I decided to give her pants, I just thought it would lend better to her adventurous lifestyle and I could draw the pose that I wanted to without it being indecent. Once I was happy with the pose, I actually took my kneaded eraser and I kind of just erased the whole thing lightly so I could just barely see it, then I sharpened my pencil and went over the whole thing again and so it's got like a more finished refined style. I'm really happy with this one, great start to the day. I guess it's time to move on to the next page, bye sketch! Okay, next up we have this like anime manga looking witch. I dabbled, I gotta say it didn't stick with me for very long but yeah there we have it, let's recreate it. Again I'm gonna redraw it how I would imagine it to look if it was just like an idea in my head and not a reference I was recreating and you can kind of see I started with some thumbnails and when I had something that I was excited about, I moved much larger. So I started with the broom, added in the pose, kind of did like the sack of flower technique for her torso. So what I want her to look is like kind of terrified, I feel like that's what I see in the reference, like she's falling, she looks scared to me, that is what I really tried to capture. Even after creating the thumbnails, I still took a couple attempts to get the pose right in the larger version. I even went back to the thumbnails and tried something again to see like is this really working and I moved back to the larger one and tried again. I found pushing the terrified expression really helped. In the end, I ended up with something that wasn't much like the thumbnail or the reference at all. Kind of just like tightly squeezed her legs around the broom, she's just like not letting go. Then, once I had a pose, it was time to add in the outfit. This was tricky because there's a broom, there's her legs and she's wearing a skirt. It's like how it was definitely easiest after kind of erasing it a little bit and then going over it again and finding all the little details in there and then it was time to figure out that skirt. I found it was easiest to really emphasize like the motion, like she's moving really quickly. Make sure anything that's not like tight to her body is flowing behind her. That's something I took from the reference. You can kind of see that tie is blowing behind her as well. So I just took that same movement and added it to the skirt. I did change up the hair, just not my style. Again, I was redrawing it if it was an idea I had in my head right now. There it is, I'm really happy with this one. So let's move on to the next page. Here we have, I guess another self portrait. So this is me and my best friend at the time. She was in that previous illustration, the one in the middle. When it came to recreating this one, I really wanted to add a little bit more perspective to it because looking at the reference, like, what plane of existence are they even standing on? Well, they're sitting but still. So I sketched in a bed because again, I'm the artist, I know what I was drawing, that's a bed they're sitting on. I think this was kind of based off of a specific time When we were sitting on my bed and she had brought over like a teen magazine because it has those like fun quizzes to see who like your celebrity husband is or whatever and a random memory is that it had an article about the girl who had been cast as Lava Girl in Sharkboy. Lava Girl, does this age me at all? Ooh, and we were both so jealous that got to hang out with Taylor Lautner Anyway, that's like the stuff flooding back while I was recreating this. So yeah, it wasn't in the original version but I gave my best friend the magazine just to kind of encompass it all together. I think I did a much better job enclosing them into a scene like as us and my bed drawing skills have improved tenfold and yeah, really happy with this one. The background is very simple, sketchy but I just wanted to like give them an environment to live in. So there we have it. Alright, next up, we have fan art, oooOoooo! So this is a character by Mark Crilley. I believe her name was Miki and she was from his Manga Miki Falls. So yeah, he was like my favorite person to watch on YouTube. He'd do all these art tutorials and talk about the Mangas he was creating. So I remember I got his, I guess, they're not graphic novels, they're mangas from the library and I was reading them. So this was like my little homage to that and since the original illustration is in colored pencil. I decided to recreate mine in colored pencil as well. I'm not the best with colored pencils but I did find these that I had which are like three colors mixed into each pencil and I was able to use some of that and then I found a colored pencil that has a color on each end, so I was able to use those and I was actually able to find very similar colors to what I had used for the original illustration. Now, fun fact, I think I made up those colors because that's just the colors I had at the time, so it felt right, you know, finding colors I had now at the time to recreate the colors I had then at the time in the original illustration. Her hair does look very blonde but I distinctly remember in the Manga, hair being very very dark, so don't worry, we go over that again as I was like adding in all the colors for each of the different elements. I decided to use a dark blue pencil instead of black for the line art. I just thought it would look a little bit more soft that way. This is the part that really brought life to little Miki. Like, adding in the skin and the blush, just looks like a character now/. Added a little circle behind her and boom and I'm very happy with it. Did you think I would say that? Probably, I've said it about everything else. Alright, now the next page this is another one where I was like, am I gonna bother redrawing this? But then I was like no, I'm gonna redraw everything, so I have to. It's some eyeballs. I think, quite specifically, it was actually an eye, manga eye tutorial by Mark Crilley and this is another one where I was like oh, do I look up that tutorial and follow it again? But I chose not to, I decided to just redraw what I saw in my style. So here you'll see the little boy face. The very random disembodied eyeball, The larger head with the very pointy chin and the big dark eyeballs. It's crazy just seeing the differences, you know? It's not like a finished illustration or something but just seeing how I would tackle the exact same thing now versus then, very interesting and then finally the last eye in the top right that kind of reminds me of a keyhole. So yeah that was this page. Alright, next page, here we go, we're going in again. We're going to draw magna girl. I'm going to really redeem myself this time. I was really excited about this. I changed up the pose. I used a line of action. I had that arm way above her head. I've got her flying. Ooh, I was ready for this and because I was ready and I was comfortable with making changes, I was smart enough to move the arm when I realized I would like it better below her head because at the time of drawing the left illustration, Magna girl was far less developed. I didn't know when she learned to fly. I didn't know how she learned to fly but now I know those things, so I know that that's not really how she flies. So she flies more with her arms below her a little more Iron man-y, I guess. Gotta stay true to what we're at right now. I also know that when she learns to fly, she's much older, so I updated the outfit, made it a little bit more mature, gave her a cool utility belt, darkened up all my favorite lines, added in some fire blasting out of her limbs, added in some hints of cloud in the background just to make it look like she's flying, I guess, so yeah, super happy with this one, I did have the same issue where it kind of got elongated because of where I was sitting but I think it works because she's like moving upwards, it kind of like stretches her out a little bit, so yeah, happy with that. Move on to the next one. What is this? Okay so we're redrawing this one. She's very blobby, she's got these like, looks like sticks of butter, sticking out of her everywhere. I can't say I was thrilled about that concept so I kind of just maintained what I liked about it, kept the pose extremely similar, kept the ponytail, kept the crossed arms. Now around here is where I like shifted in my shift, so around here is where I kind of like shifted in my seat, got up above it, noticed that her head was a little too small for my liking and this is I think what made the biggest improvement for this sketch is when I erased the face and redid it completely. I think I just like the sketch a lot more now and sometimes when you don't like something, just try and redraw the face, maybe you'll like all the rest a whole lot better, so yeah, very gung-ho by the new face. I kind of just darkened up all my favorite lines of the sketch, finished it up, added a little bit more contrast and there we have it. I did not add the blobs. I apologize if that was something you were looking forward to. Alrighty, next one up, we have a pirate, another thing I was obsessed with at the time. I believe Pirates of the Caribbean had like just come out, so we're talking like the height of pirates-ness. I started this one off with like the background. So I've got that big bag of pirate loot, I got a chest, the chest originally was like kind of small and behind the bag of loot but i made it bigger and kind of like sitting on top of it. Then it came to trying to make the pose work so I wanted to make sure that it looked like this character was actually laying on it so I wanted like the butt to be closer to the camera and like the head is like pushed backwards like they're laying down. This was extremely tricky but a lot of fun. Let's just say the pose changed a lot. I kept moving the legs, ended up moving the arms a couple times. It was an adventure. Something I changed a lot was the hair. I decided to make it look a little bit more, I don't know, historical, like it's a wig or something, I don't know. I love everything except the face and I redrew the face a couple times and I just wasn't really able to get it to work but there's our pirate lady. And next up we've got dancing girl. I was going to recreate this in the exact same pose but my brain told me something else so I decided to listen to my brain. I kept the like wide stance of the legs, you know like that dancing movement. I figured it would kind of translate better if I did something different with the arms and I noticed pretty quickly that it just didn't look like she was moving enough. It kind of just looked like she was stretching. So I played around with those legs as well. I went with the slight squat. I feel like it just has a little bit more movement to it. I tried to update the outfit because I wasn't that inspired, let's say, by the one on the left. Um, I took inspiration from like the capris that she's wearing and I'm like well what kind of capris do people wear now? Well people wear kind of like leggings, so I made them leggings and then the top, I was like what kind of top goes with that? So I tried a couple things and this is what I ended up with. Then I had to make sure that she had the two buns in her hair because I felt like that was important and this is what I ended up with. Nice simple dancing sketch. Alright next up, some of you may recognize this, this is my pilot girl. I actually used this sketch for like a redraw video like three or four years ago. So I think it was when this sketch was 10 years old. I recreated it and I like colored it all in and I can't really remember what it looked like and I chose to not look. I didn't want it to influence how I'd recreate it this time. So I looked at the one on the left, I redrew it on the right. We did the same old, same old, I don't know, guidelines. Darkening it up, adding contrast, developing the outfit. I did change up the outfit a lot. I do remember doing that as well with the redraw and something I noticed about the original sketch was that there's like movement in the scarf. So I wanted to emphasize that anymore and I also added that movement to the hair. Something I do remember from the redraw was making her pants have that like poofy kind of like explored look. So I added those in as well. Something else I wanted to do was like give her a little bit more confidence and I was able to do that by kind of changing up the pose. Raising that hand that's on her hip a little higher. Yeah, I was really really happy with this one. I had so much fun with it. Like it felt like hanging out with an old friend again because it's like the third time I've drawn it. I do think I'm not gonna look but I'm gonna take a guess and say this is my favorite recreation of it. I'll put up the uh, the redraw just to show you and then you can be the judge and you know what, I'll link that video down below if you want to cringe a little too, listen to me four years younger being extremely happy with the end results of that previous sketch. I rode high into the next one. This is what I like to call girl on a block who's bored. I started with the block but I realized that the angle of it was not the same as the one on the left so I redrew that block. I got a little overwhelmed and so I decided to draw the character first and just add the block in later. I've been having a lot of fun lately like drawing squishy poses so I really tried to emphasize the squashiness of the pose. I tried to keep the pose as close to the original as possible but again,. drawing it how I would now. So I changed up the angle and kind of had her looking up at the viewer instead of sideways, then once I knew where her butt was, I added in the block and yeah, most of the pose pretty much stayed the same. I did change up the outfit a smidge, which you might be able to notice. I also just raised up the knee because the one on the left, she's like leaning down on her knee but her leg is just as high as the other leg. I don't think that'd be very comfortable and if it was happening, she would be far more bent over, so I decided to bring that knee up so that it would be more casual, I guess. I kept that sweatshirt hoodie and then I added in hair the way I draw hair now. So here we go, this is what I ended up with. Another one that I'm just like so excited about showing you guys because I had so much fun with it and I really like the way it turned out. Again, with that like circle in the background. Alright the next page. We have a girl, don't know, like, in an Easter dress or something. So I left space in the page for both of these. I left like a little block and I started off with the taller one because I do specifically remember that I drew that one first. So I'm just kind of trying to recreate the pose as closely as possible. I did twist like the torso and the body a little bit but I'm trying to recreate everything as I see it. Fun tidbit of information, I distinctly remember when I drew this that I was like this looks like a little kid dress but it's on an adult body so that is why I created the chibi version because I was like, I really like this dress and it was really fun to draw but I just don't like the way it looks. So by recreating the smaller version, I was able to like get the best of both worlds. This was a really interesting pose to draw. I had a lot of fun with it, kind of like figuring out how it would look in my style now. So like her arms are like very away from her body and that she's holding her own hand kind of like that. I really like that pose. I feel like I want to do that again sometimes. Alright and moving on to the chibi version, again, I got to do it in my style, the way I draw chibis now, which is kind of lanky bodies with a big round head. So, that's exactly what I did. I also decided to make it look just a little younger. So I gave her little piggy tails instead. So the "adult version" I'm using air quotes, has like a big bun on the bottom and then the younger version has two little buttons on the top. Yep, other than that, same pose, same outfit. Yeah, this page turned out really cute, I'm quite happy with it. Alright moving on to the next one. So this character was originally like a friend of Magna girls. So there were, I think there were three characters and they each had superpowers. So Magna girl was fire, this girl was sparkles, that was her magic power. Anyway, when I looked at this illustration, I immediately pictured it like the same pose but her looking over her shoulder instead, so that's what I decided to go with. For the outfit, I have not drawn this character probably since, well, let me look, 2008, so it's been a while. I decided to update the outfit a little bit, give it more of like a magical floaty vibe. So, it's got like these weird like circles that look like slices of squash. I thought it worked. I also played around with the hair and changed that up. She's kind of just like floating there. So instead of the hair like blowing upwards, like she's falling, I made it look a little bit more like she's just floating there and like casually looking at you and like eye flirting and then since her magic power is sparkles, I had to add lots of sparkles. Then same drill, once I was pretty happy with it, I went over and like darkened all the lines, just to really bring life into it and there it is, I think her hair is my favorite part. Okay next sketch. So this is my like pop star. Looking back, it looks a lot more country star to me. I don't know, I don't think I knew much back then, so give me a break. I chose to emphasize maybe a little bit more country vibe. Maybe like a small bar music club thing. So I drew her in the center of the page and I worked on the pose and really made it look like she was singing instead of just looking behind her and then there's these two little blobs on the illustration on the left that were supposed to be like lights that are shining on her. So I took advantage of that and like made them more part of the illustration instead of just an add-on. Then I started darkening up some of the sketch. Figuring out the outfit, I kept it pretty similar. What I thought was funny is the one on the left, she has like zip off pants, like she can turn them into capris or shorts which were popular at the time, so I kind of kept those lines. Then I added some more lights on like the edge of the stage and then I added in some fans. I really like that guy, he looks happy. I thought some tattoos might suit her. Pretty happy with that. I think I did a really good job of like taking what it was, like the one on the left and then just stepping it up a notch. And next up we have this cute little sketch. Funny story, at the time when I drew this, I thought it was so obvious that if someone looked in my sketchbook, they'd know who this guy was because it was my crush at the time that I decided to change up the character so that it didn't look like me and gave it like circle tights and stuff, like, so something that I would never wear so that it wouldn't be obvious but now everyone knows. anyway. Anyway, recreating this, you'll know this, I've made all the characters a lot bigger, I decided to do like a torso up situation. I thought I would be able to emphasize or work on the arms and the shoulders a little bit better because that was something I was like nervous about. So that is what I did and I'm really glad that I did too because like, if I was gonna have to draw the legs, I wanted to make everything smaller and I wouldn't have been able to do what I did. This arm also gave me grief, wasn't entirely sure where to put it and like, look, it looks so broken right now. I just wanted to show you that. So yeah, this, I just kind of moved around legs and arms willy-nilly until I thought it looked better than it did before. Knees, moved knees a lot and then once I got to a pose that I was pretty happy with, I was able to kind of like iron out the clothes a little more, move some butts, yeah, you know, the usual. Something that I think helped add little depth was like adding shading to the further body parts. So like it would be this right arm is in shadow and like her right shoulder is very dark, that was pretty helpful. I think I've read that drawing two characters interacting is like the most difficult thing ever. So like hugging, kissing, piggyback riding. I understand what they're saying, it's hard to draw them without them going through each other. It was difficult, that's all I'll say. There we have it, this is what it ended up looking like after playing around with it for about an hour. I'm quite happy with it, I think it's something I would love to try again. Maybe look up some references next time. Alright, next up, we've got, I, this might be from a how to draw book if not it's my own thing and if it is my own thing, I would really like to critique it but I don't know if that's how it looked if it wasn't in how to draw book but anyway, I thought the best way to critique it would be just to draw it the way I would draw it now. So I tried to keep the outfit as similar as possible that was. Really low rise jeans, super baggy cargo pants. I raised the arms up over the head a little bit differently. I suppose it would look pretty similarly, it's just from like a different angle but honestly, I didn't spend too much time on this. I kind of just went with my gut for every decision instead of redoing anything. So this is what that looked like. Okay, next up, this was definitely from a how to draw book. I like that I titled it "Fallen". Anyway, recreating it, I did a little circle for the background and I started adding in the character with the pose. So what I decided to keep was that she had fallen over, her knees are touching, her butt's on the ground, her right arm is like scratching her head, like what happened? So that's what I kept everything else. I kind of just tried to do a little bit differently. Mostly the style, the style is my style now. decided to make like the clothes a little baggier and more, I don't know, something I would draw. I also noticed that her bum was showing based on where I put the legs. So I gave her some like biker shorts. Yeah, this one came pretty naturally. What's specifically interesting about this one is that when I drew it, I know I followed a tutorial and all that but I was so happy with it, like when you make something that you're happy with, you don't easily forget and I remember that feeling and I feel that way about the new recreation and it's like sharing that with myself. If I could go back what, 13 years ago and show this to my past self, what would I think? Because I think that I would think that that was crazy. Like one day, my art will look like that. I'm just recreating this entire sketchbook really put it into perspective how important it is to encourage people when they're doing something they enjoy. I just know without the encouragement that I got in this first sketchbook but things could have been very different. Anyway here's the finished version of that in my own style. I'm quite happy with the scrunchiness of the pose and I think it looks rather natural. Okay we're getting into the final stretch here. This was the last day I worked on this sketchbook. We're drawing princess runaway. How do you like my titles, are they great? I remember spending hours on this like shading all the wrinkles with my finger and then adding in more cross hatching and then blending and then hatching and then blending and then hatching and just adding extra layers. I think originally, the dress was like that short length and then I added another one. So like the dress just kept getting longer and longer and longer. What I think's difficult to see in the original version, is that she's running, like, I think it translates just because I did a pretty good job with like the arms and like the way the dress is moving but for the new one, I wanted to really emphasize the running. So I stuck the foot out a little further. I also like had her grab the skirt like she's lifting it up, so that she's not getting caught on it. Went back to good old faithful. Took my kneaded eraser, erased most of it and then went over it a second time to find those like fine details. I mean as far as you can get with a sketch of this size, I guess. So yeah, I didn't exactly spend hours on this one but I'm still happy with the way it turned out. Alright next up, we've got like a ballerina of some kind. I remember when I made this but originally it was just like a pose like, ooh, arms up off my head and I was like it looks a little weird, so I added in the like cloth. So this time I recreated the drawing with the cloth much more at the front of my mind. I changed up the outfit quite a bit. I kept like the corset thing and like the ruffles but I just kind of like moved some of them. I also pushed like the viewpoint backwards a little. So now the character's just a little bit smaller and I also tried to emphasize like the ballerina-ness. So I gave her like a ballerina bun. Originally, the illustration on the left's hair was just, I don't know a little lacking by the end of it. I don't think she looked totally ballerina but she definitely looked like she'd have a stage presence like maybe in like a musical or something and at the end, I darken it all up, add some contrast and some sparkles, pretty happy with that. Second to last one, we have this fairy. So she's got wings, she's got like little outfit. This is another one of those ones where I redrew it more than necessary. I didn't like the pose of the left one. So I started off very differently. Kind of like looking up giving up a cute little like shoulders up kind of pose. I feel like the shoulders I kind of stuck with from the beginning and then the like arms going straight down away from the viewer but the legs, the legs were the hard part. I originally wanted to do it like the legs kind of spread a little bit further apart because that would take more inspiration but it just could not get it to look right so we had to find other plans. It hurts a little deep down to like skip over this sketch so much because I spent so much time on it but what I ended up with was like one leg straight down and then one knee kind of bent up. Added in some nice sparkles, you know, gotta make it look magical and I really like the way the wings turned out and in the end, the pose, I'm happy with it. Alright, the last sketch, this is it, we've reached the end. I just need to breathe a second. I can't believe I've made it this far. Another uninteresting and unnecessary piece of information but I do remember where I was when I was drawing this and it was uh, the waiting room of my dentist I remember being so excited finishing the drawing because it was the first sketchbook I've ever filled because it was like this goal of mine. I'm like if I can finish a sketchbook, I'm an artist and well, I guess I can uh claim that title now. Not that you need to fill in it's just a sketchbook to be an artist. That was just my brain as if what, 14 year old? This is one of the ones that I think I changed up quite a bit. Like kept her sitting on a club but I just, the outfit, I couldn't understand what I meant. This sort of style with the chubby shins, very round front of the arm, what is that called? Anyway, I decided to leave that out but I maintained the like sort of cave girl kind of vibe with the animal print but I changed up the outfit quite a bit. I actually didn't decide on the outfit so much later. I made sure I had the pose right first and I really loved that big massive hair. I was sure to include that. Now this was the last page of the sketchbook, right? So I was celebrating, anyway, I was a little giddy, I was excited to be at the end of this journey and I went a little crazy on the outfit, okay? I kept the animal print, I kept the like boot things, I just made them very long high high boots. I could picture this character input it into that like, rock star illustration I made earlier, where she's like singing into the microphone. I feel like this outfit could have worked. Especially the hair. Then there it was. I added in some depth, you know, make the sketch really pop and that was it. I can't believe it, I did it! So it was about 14 hours spread across seven days but originally it took me like what, three months? So it didn't take quite as long interestingly enough. Anyway let's go, let's take a quick look. I know the video is really long but we had the eyeballs, we had this, no let's not look at that one. We've got this beautiful face, I'm very happy with that. Then we have the dog. We have the hands. Our pixie, that's when I feel like things started to go really well and then we had the dry erase marker. We have creepy boy, what did I call it? Creepy portrait of boy, creepy boy, a portrait, I don't know. Oh, we have my grandma. Me and my friends. As little preteens. The genie, the magna girl sketches. That really cool spider girls web didn't make it into the video and then there's the page where I realized I needed a break. The next day, came back refreshed, we got our Indiana Jones girl along with a witch who's very terrified of flying. Me and my friend going through the magazine. Miki with colored pencil. The random eye page, that's what I call it. Magna girl flying. Girl without the bumps, that's what I'll call her. I really like the way the hair turned out on that one. We've got pirate with her loot. Dancing girl with the double buns, oh that sounds weird. The pilot, one of my faves. This is also another one of my faves, this was a good drawing day. I just like the pose, just seems natural. We got what the Easter girls. Magic sparkly girl. The rock star. Piggyback riding for the day, oh what do I call that? Piggyback riding. This one that I didn't spend that much time on and I don't really know what to say. "Fallen" I remember what I named it before. Yeah, the runaway princess. The ballerina turned more Broadway character. Uh we have the fairy and finally the cave woman. Oh my gosh, ah, you ever like set a goal for yourself and you're like well, that's dumb, you're never gonna do it and then you do it and you're just like what happened, who am I? Well that's what happened today. I'm very happy to have completed recreating a sketchbook. I didn't realize how much it would mean to me and it just got me so much more excited about recreating stuff and when someone I know is like in an art block, I usually recommend recreating something you were proud of like way back in the day and so this was like that on steroids. So I want to thank you guys for watching, thanks for coming on this adventure with me, it was fun. I'll see you guys next week and I hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles. Bye!
