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”Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation”.


Henry Cartier-Bresson

Drawing has always been a minor passion for me. Minor in the sense that while I always liked to draw, I never really pursued any kind of training for this. Not even self-training.

In a sense, even my interest in Shodo was a result of my passion for visual expression. Another thing I always wanted to do was to try my hand at Urban Sketching - which I always thought to be easier than actual figure drawing, In reality, even this did not even progress to the (fairly basic) stage of "buying some book on Amazon and let it gather dust on a shelf"…

All this changed - as it often happens - by accident: in the early part of 2019, I discovered (thanks to Recomendo) Line of Action a nice website where you could get semi-random photos of the subject. You can select full human figures, animals, hands & feet, and faces/expressions… they are even beta-testing landscapes/buildings now.

This simmered for a bit, and then one day I decided to try my hand at doing just one sketch right after breakfast and before going to the office.

For the start I just selected full-figures female only and set the timer to 2 minutes. The results were not very good (I have to thank a small group of friends who had to play guinea pigs for me, mostly through Whatsapp) but I was having a lot of fun, so I started expanding my horizons, first by giving myself more time (I am not timing this but I think I mostly stay around 5-6 minutes when I draw in the morning) and then by moving to hands/feet.

I am not really sure if this will become a constant element of my daily routine like some other things I have been doing regularly, but it is very fun, and I have also started doing longer sessions in the evening or during the weekends.

I haven't fully standardized on my tools, either - I do a sketch with a very thin pen (like Pilot G-Tec-C - .04 or Pentel Pointliner .1) and then, depending on the model, I add colour using fude pens or - more recently Stabilo 88 Fineliner which I just got a 20 colors pack of).

The last step was to resuscitate my Instagram profile which has been inactive for at least four years. I will probably use it for other stuff, too (i.e. photos) but as long as the drawing fever is high it will mostly be used to showcase my drawing efforts .

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