Before I started getting into pastel pencils, I was inspired by Ioana Pioaru’s meticulous micro pen drawings and I wanted to give it a try. This was the result. I wanted to try it with some old building but with enough challenge. I photographed the Southgate Church from the nearby roundabout with a little zoom in for a better composition, and that was my reference. It is hard and meticulous work. One mistake can ruin the whole picture if it is, for example, during the sky lines, because the deviation from the unified lines would draw the attention, therefore breaking up the flow/rhythm of the view. Vegetation lines are more forgiving.
I enjoyed it though, and will be making this sort of art sometime again.

This was a month-long challenge from Ioana Pioaru’s site that I decided to take part in for the fun/and practice of it. She would share one random section of a photograph every second day and the participants were to draw that section in a previously cut-up A4 paper. We would not see the full picture until the very end. Therefore if the participant’s precision weren’t on point, the final picture would not line up properly, as it happened a tiny bit here and there in my case. This was the first time I ever done anything like this, and it was fun, but quite difficult. I forgot what estate it shows, but somewhere in South England I think.

These were random practices. The goat is from an emblem in a game I liked the design of, and it was only the silhouette as reference. The two buildings are from photo references, and the tree with a character lying at its feet was free-flow.

During covid lockdown we went to the beach one day and the little town had an art store, and I found this little sketchbook with nice quality, but thick, black paper. I never tried drawing in reverse colours but I had seen pictures before. I purchased it, along with a fine quality white pencil, and gave it a go that night.
I started with an easier, simple picture with that first cat in the gallery. At first I was kind of amazed, but the second try with the close-up cat face blew me away. Looking back now, the first cat is really mediocre, and the second one is only nice from a distance because of the details, but at the time it can motivate you.

I started filling up the notebook over the weeks and months, testing and practicing this form, until I went into an art store again and purchased a bigger black paper notebook, same quality. The last five pictures are from that. The bigger ones take significantly more time, and eventually I moved on. I also had to buy another white pencil because the first one worn down, as it is visible on some of the pictures. This is not all of them, but the majority.

If anyone wishes to commission this format in either of these sizes, I still have plenty of pages left from those notebooks, just fill out the commission form with “Board size: Other”, and write in the comment on the bottom that it is this that you’d like.

Fun fact: The character wearing skull is a fanart I made from a game called Hunt: Showdown 1896. The bone doctor. Some players expressed their wish to purchase it, but I still own it.

I always liked figure drawings. I kind of started practicing daily after I have completed some graphite drawings on large canvases, which was after the black paper-white pencil practice above, with varying intensity between 2022 and 2025. I miss it, and I now own a book on it to study from but not high enough on my priority list unfortunately to make progress in it.

Some of them are fairly quick/sketch type, some I took my time with. I filled quite a few sketchbooks like this, I just selected a few photos now. I am selling the originals, which will be available through the upcoming shop I’m planning to create on this site.

My anatomy studies aren’t really there yet, I know, hence I’d love to study the book I mentioned above.
My focus with this practice was efficiency/value. So getting the highest satisfaction, and a somewhat good drawing, from the least amount of time input. Sort of a short, high focus training, like in a rapid chess game. Plus practicing not overworking pieces, which I really should implement in my pastel art now.

Most of these were done based on reference photos. I’m always more proud of the ones I created wholly by myself, like the short witch in the bottom, along with its textured parchment, which was for a DnD project (I’m not into DnD but I appreciate the art and the fantasy/creativity of it), and the Halloween character, and the big snake with the hybrid woman, though that could be upgraded.

Some of these were commissions like portraits, or online challenges. Mostly just practice.
Of course, there are many more smaller practices, sketches, or even complete pieces, but lost over the years or discarded. If I find more, I will upload them.
Looking back now how short this gallery is, I could have been a lot more productive on this front. I wasn’t given it my all, other than the Michonne character from Walking Dead, but even that could be upgraded.
I wonder what I could create nowadays.
But again, AI generation can do these better within seconds now, and more, and if you’d create something unbelievable, people would label it as AI, so you’d need constant work in progress proof.

Anyway, like I mentioned in my About page, I learned a lot by getting into digital art. The amount of control cannot be beaten by any other traditional artform. You can zoom in all the way to a pixel, you can move parts, warp, mirror, layer, modify infinitely.
But it wasn’t just that. Form, blurry sprays, lighting, textures. gradients etc. I picked a lot of knowledge up by practicing digital art, many of which are transferable to other art forms.

There is a lot of crappy, early experimentation ones here as well, but it’s good for humility, and to see improvement. There were a lot more discarded practices.

The one I was really surprised by is the 5th photo: the “Diablo (game) / Violator (Spawn)” inspired skull head which is dated as 2011. I created that with a mouse as well, no reference. I remember how deeply I was in flow there one night, just listening to music, creating. Even today I like that one, except the teeth, because texture, blur, contrast, colors and saturation, the badassness of it is quite cinematic looking for an amateur with a mouse.
And then the Venom next to it is another one I was surprised by, again, no reference. That’s when I discovered how background lighting can make a difference on a subject.

About 90% of this gallery were created without reference, only free-flowing experimentational practices, or started with an idea and see where it went. Plus a couple baby portraits were commissions from photos for friends.

It’s interesting to me to realise how as a young (18-21) testosterone-filled boy mostly steered towards drawing either hot women or creatures/monsters, which is a bit cringe now but normal I guess. (I still like drawing them actually)

When I first got the sense of how easily and intuitively you can form all sorts of life-forms, I was swept away. That was the moment with that first two pictures, after watching the tutorial on the basics.

Also, I only used reference photos for the raptor and the xenomorph (Alien movies). Everything else was random practice.

So I dived into it by watching tutorials on youtube and trying the learnt lessons out straight away. I have done that after work in the evenings. I had nothing else with me at the time as I just newly emigrated, and I lived with a mate and slept on the floor.

You can see that I started with head sculptures, and then tried out a full body character, but this is when I also noticed the limitations of my laptop. It started lagging as I turned the model.
Instead, I went back to smaller pieces and started focusing on colorising.
Then started playing with lights.
Then I tested rendering (as much as my computer could, with its inbuilt “noname” graphic card).
Then I practiced posing them.
Then came the hair and fur.
Then adding mechanical looking components separately, instead of sculpting everything out entirely from one ball.

I completely abandoned 2d art during this period, because I was amazed by how much you can create in just 1 hour (see the white skull), whereas in 2d you might create something nice in the same time, but that’s still only 2d.

Upping the resolution and refining everything I learnt, I wanted to create a full character Anubis as an exam for myself, but my laptop was suffering. I could not go higher resolution/more realistic or sculpt more details into it. The lagging was the limitation. So that dear Anubis is frozen in time in its “work in progress” state.
I had to stick to head size models, as you can see on the last 3 pictures. I combined all that I learned on that to make it realistic, but I couldn’t go beyond that. It was a ton of fun though.
I could have created anything I dreamed of.

And I still wanted to learn to animate my characters, as I also learnt to rig them. I wanted to “bring them alive” with movements, and even add sound effects, but it was not possible with my dear potato laptop.

At the time I was really hyped about this form of art and was seriously considering looking for ways to work in this industry. The peak was when I reached out to an employee who worked in one of the leading company in London that makes the CGI for the biggest Hollywood movies, and showed me inside the building in their office how he works on a scene of an upcoming movie. (not sharing names to protect him).
It wasn’t specifically the sculpting part, but amazing nevertheless. It was also out of office hours, because apparently they could work whenever, as long as their deadline was met.
My still agency worker backside at the time could only dream of working in such place.

Videogames and movies still use this software to create creatures, environment, characters.
On the other hand, AI is also coming for this industry. There are multiple companies training AIs specifically for generating usable 3d models, and they can also rig them for animation. And those softwares only going to get better with time, replacing all human sculptors.

Anyways, I don’t know why, but I never thought of upgrading my kit. I guess I was still in extreme saving mode, as my net worth was about 0 at the time of my emigration.

So some time after that the fuel slowly ran out. Nowadays when I got better kit, the price of the software has become subscription based and high priced enough that I can’t be bothered. Along with the fact that I would need to re-learn everything. I’ve got enough hobbies and interests as it is. Plus the development of AI taking this line away, too.

I would rather like to try creating real life sculptures.

It is quite easy to make caricature of people who display/possess some significant features about their face. The real challenge is with people without any. I failed with those practices miserably. (One could argue that there is no such thing as no feature, but it depends on your skill to make it visible. In other words: get good)
That’s where the real observation and creativity lies, and that’s where the professionals made. I am really far from that, but I remember enjoying creating these. Really fun and creative practice. I love how you can really go crazy or simple on features and it still pinpoints that one person in our world.

I know my hometown’s top caricature artist, and he can recreate anyone with just a few simple lines. It is fantastic to see his abilities. I have a lot of respect for that. He told me “The “secret” is in the eyes. You got to get those correct, and the rest will be easy.”

(Note to self: It would worth practicing this from time to time. Simplifying/exaggerating any observation while still recognisable is a skillset usable in any artform)

As an extra note: as I’m digging up these older and older pictures, it is interesting to me seeing how my signature changes over the years.

Can’t have no sketches section on an artist page.. This is just a quick selection of many. I might add more as I stumble upon more. These are all within the past 4-5 years I think.
Can you find the odd one out? The one that is a mural, and a human size. I love that one.