Sketchbook
Welcome to my online sketchbook. Here you will get a window into my approach, what inspires me, and progress on my latest projects. This year, I have decided to focus on portrait and figure drawing to help round out my explorations in architecture.
Classical Portrait - I
venerdì 6 febbraio 2026
After working on Samantha’s portrait, I decided to work more on the three-quarter profile view with the shading technique. At this point I was still more than a bit uncertain with relying upon shading, especially with my focus on using a pen to make marks, not to mention my love of line.
Form & Shading - III
giovedì 5 febbraio 2026
After experimenting with the “Soft Approach” on sample sketches, I decided to attempt another portrait of my friend, Samantha. For some reason, perhaps because I am trying too hard, I found it more difficult to draw someone that I know than a model or copy from a book.
Form & Shading - II
giovedì 5 febbraio 2026
After my first foray into building form, I decided to continue experimenting. This time I used the “Soft Approach” outlined in Loomis’ work, Creative Illustration. This approach makes sense to me, and allows me to add fine details at the very end, after I’ve completed the majority of shading.
Form & Shading - I
giovedì 5 febbraio 2026
As much as I enjoy working with line and pen, lines simply don’t work out as well when trying to depict the human face. With this in mind, I finally decided to take yet another step into the unknown to work exclusively with shading to build form.
Pencil Portraits - I
mercoledì 4 febbraio 2026
As you all know, I have been reading Loomis’ books on Illustration for the past several weeks. Today I decided to work on shading along with line, based upon Loomis’ statement “line defines, shading gives form”.
Portraits in Pencil - I
lunedì 2 febbraio 2026
This morning, I continued working with portraits in pencil, mainly to practice proportions and positioning of the facial elements. I also paid more attention to shading, especially around the eyes and nose, to help define these features without relying upon the heaviness of lines.
Portraits, Proportions, & Pencil - I
domenica 1 febbraio 2026
After working with the mockup of Razumov’s work, I realized that I needed to work on facial structures, proportioning, and neck alignment with my portraits. I began the day working with different facial angles in relation to the neck, and then progressed to several larger-format female faces.
Full Figure - w/ Initial Color
sabato 31 gennaio 2026
Even though I am used to working with custom color as far as mixing goes, this is the first time that I have experimented with using another person’s palette - and it is much more challenging than I ever expected. I am part way through the painting at this point, and will be curious to see how things shift once I push the darks and shadows.
Full Figure from Painting - III
venerdì 30 gennaio 2026
After working with the colored pencil, I decided to go back and do another rendition of Razumov’s work depicting a woman at a café. Thanks to all my pencil work, I noticed that I have an even lighter touch than before — allowing me to add in detail while letting the piece breathe.
Full Figure from Painting - II
mercoledì 28 gennaio 2026
After working with the sketch from the previous evening, I decided to work with a full-color version of Razumov’s painting in colored pencil to work on my figure proportions, flow, and perspective. After a bit of sketching, I decided to add ink in as well.
Full Figure from Painting - I
martedì 27 gennaio 2026
This is a light sketch that I made while talking on the phone to my artist friend, Lizzie. She made the suggestion that I look at and deconstruct artists that I find inspiring, so I pulled up a piece by Konstantin Razumov and began sketching.
Shading Figures - I
martedì 27 gennaio 2026
In these sketches, I was working with exercises from Andrew Loomis’ work, “Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth”, namely experimenting with the different planes that the human body can be broken into to help with light, shading, and contouring.
Working with Shading
domenica 25 gennaio 2026
In this exercise, based upon Loomis’ work, “Successful Drawing”, I decided to work primarily with shading and shadow, instead of relying upon line. The contours of the human face require a soft touch, otherwise people can end up looking much older than they actually are
Female Proportions - I
domenica 25 gennaio 2026
The female figure has different proportions than their male counterpart. Instead of breaking up the figure into eighths, I worked with a technique based upon dividing the figure into thirds and then sixths for proportioning and placing the hips.
The Female Figure
sabato 24 gennaio 2026
After working with the male proportions initially, I found it incredibly challenging to shift gears and properly lay out female proportions. The large number of sketches represent my level of frustration with not quite being able to simply “shift gears” and embrace a new set of proportions.
Three-Point Views
venerdì 23 gennaio 2026
Today, I decided to step out into another realm and work with lines of flesh instead of solely upon proportions using the skeleton of a mannikin-based body. These are the three-view diagrams of men and women, working with and incorporating the lessons of proportion from my previous exercises.
Figures & Proportions
mercoledì 21 gennaio 2026
In this sketch, I was working with basic scaling and proportions for the (male) human figure. Like everything else, this is just a matter of practice.
Portraits & Planes - II
mercoledì 21 gennaio 2026
This was my first attempt at working with the secondary planes of the face. True to form, thinking in terms of the primary planes helped with my shading for the portrait in colored pencil, especially in the areas of the forehead and cheekbones.
A Portrait in Colored Pencil
martedì 20 gennaio 2026
After working with the pencil for shading and proportions, I wanted to try something new, just to switch things up. The colored pencil forced me to really think about shading, while being more careful to lay down lighter construction lines to allow the lighter skin tones to speak.
A Portrait in Pencil
lunedì 19 gennaio 2026
After working on structure and proportions, I decided to play with a real human, just to see how the techniques would work with an actual portrait. While I had completed several portrait commissions last year, I was surprised at how quickly these test portraits came together.