Drewscape's Blog

 
Drawn with a Uni Pin pigment brush pen. This new small brush pen has waterproof ink and it feels good when I draw with it. I decided I had to draw out another comic diary coz I've been so stressed deciding on all the materials for the upcoming comics class (A physical class in Singapore). I think I'm about settled it but there are so many decisions. Perhaps I should have kept it simpler!

I feel that doing a comic diary is never wasted. Some history is preserved.

Life for me keeps changing. At one time, when I was single and working at an ad agency, it seemed like things would stay the same all the time, day after day. I was so bored and I wished for change. After getting married, having kids to care for, taking on teaching and learning new things like youtube and photography, I wish things would slow down once in awhile so I can catch my breath. I must say, there is rarely a dull moment these days. Recently I learned to do a phenakistoscope - an invention from the 1800s. The above represents my mind or how I see myself, learning and changing all the time. This was drawn in Photoshop and made into a gif also in Photoshop. I still find it hard to pronounce "phenakistoscope"!

 

If you want to learn how to draw comics I'm going to be teaching a 6-week course on that at Brahm Centre starting 28th April. It will focus on learning how to use multiple pictures (instead of one) to tell clear narratives. We will be learning the princples involved in this format and also exploring different ways to use sequential art. We will keep it meaningful by using it to record stories from our lives. If this interests you, sign up today using this SIGN-UP LINK on eventbrite. Seniors above a certain age get a subsidized rate. All materials are provided. This course is held in Singapore, so only if you are based here. Seats are limited.

Here are some samples of what we will be learning to do:








 

I'm not sure where I heard or read it, but it's about when we get to a certain level of expertise, we tend to stick to what we are good at. And we might be afraid to try new things because we don't want to look like an amateur again. Perhaps we want to maintain that expert image.
After years sketching small and drawing in a certain way, I feel like I have little problem making things look good in that small comics-like format. I'm pretty confident in that area. But like I've been saying on this blog, sketching big is something I've not done very often and it's an area I feel I've still got room to improve in. With so much more room to fill, I've to remember to compose it like I compose a smaller drawing. There is more space to fill in the details but I've to remember to simplify or I will get lost in the small details and forget about defining those bigger shapes that hold everything together. It's easy to get lost in small details when drawing bigger.
Gouache and colour pencils. Was rather unsure of the process to nail this image.
Watercolours and colour pencils. At a food centre. A little muddy.
Watercolours and colour pencils. Outside a Temple. I could have shown a clearer subject in this picture.

Anyways, the above are some bigger sketches (a little bigger than A4) I've been doing on location. I didn't do thumbnails for these. (I was skipping that though it does help). There are things I like about them. But they aren't great. I could point out things that can work better. I was fumbling around while working on these. But I'm putting aside my wanting people to see me as "a great artist" and just be a amateur and keep learning. I think that's a great place to be.

I think I picked thoughts like that from this book I borrowed from my wife. I don't read many of these books. But I liked this one. Here is two of the quotes:
“Perhaps we'll never know how far the path can go, how much a human being can truly achieve, until we realize that the ultimate reward is not a gold medal but the path itself.”

“To be a learner, you've got to be willing to be a fool.”
― George Leonard, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

Yep, I'm super late in posting again. I'm still juggling between doing so many things (parenting, being an adjunct lecturer, personal artwork, creating classes I want to create on Skillshare, showing something valuable on Youtube and Patreon). It's quite a lot. I've a feeling I'm doing too much. I'm still deciding where I should be placing most of my time and why. I still enjoy posting in this blog and just showing what I've been up to. 
I've been teaching Urban Sketching with the gang again at a university. Although I teach, I also get to sit in on the other lecturer's lessons. Jeffrey was teaching the students to do thumbnails before doing a bigger A4 drawing, something I hardly ever to. I like going ahead and "attacking" a scene head on. And that's perhaps why I do a lot of cropped scenes and I seldom attempt larger, wider scenes.
I noticed that, among the students, the concept of thumbnails is something not so easy to grasp. I still see many students draw very detailed sketches that can be considered small finished illustrations. And they can often take up to 1.5hrs to do a thumbnail! Something is off about that.
So this is what I understand a thumbnail to be:
It is small. It is drawn very quickly. I usually take about 5 minutes to draw it. Maybe less. I simplify and capture the scene in blocks of shapes. So I outline these shapes and place them in a pleasing order. What makes it pleasing is often the rule-of-thirds and having something in the foreground, mid-ground and background, which creates depth. Then I quickly shade in 3-4 values- highlight (white), light midtone, dark midtone, and dark. I make sure the highest contrast is where I want the focus to be.
Then I start drawing my scene loosely based on my thumbail. I drew the lines lightly with a light orangey colour pencil first. The thumbnail helped me know how the scene should be cropped and how I should colour it based on the tonal value information in it. Then I added the paints and lastly the lines.

I've been liking gouache again. I bought this deep palette from ArtFriend in Singapore for about only $4. It has a rubber cover that keeps everything moist even after a week. If I leave the paint too long, it does grow mold in Singapore. So I have to be a little careful about it. I like gouache because the colours are bright and I can cover over things, even white over a dark colour.

To keep things portable, I used it with a waterbrush. For the lines I used a Derwent Lightfast Midnight Black colour pencil. The above scene is Tekka Food Centre in Singapore. It is soon going to be Hari Raya and the place is decorated.

The above sketch took me about 2 hours to complete. I was drawing with the students and also guiding students in between. That's longer than I would normally spend on an urban sketch. I usually take 10-20mins because I often draw small. But doing the thumbnail first and then using it to achieve a bigger complex drawing was rather satisfying. So I'm starting to see why some urban sketchers like this slower approach to sketching!

Here are some urban sketches (from direct observation) done during art school class time. We went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens to sketch recently. Since the brief to the class was to draw in the A4 size, I'd to lead by example and not draw in my usual small comic panel size.

I used a charcoal pencil on Fabriano Schizzi 90gsm A4 paper. Charcoal gave me a pleasantly broad line and that helped me cover more ground quicker and it also forced me to simplify. Loved how I was able to create quick mid-tone areas just by rubbing the charcoal. I also loved the messy dirty textures charcoal makes on paper. Each picture took about 10-20 mins. And I mainly focused on combining shapes, and observing the light and dark values.

How did I add in the color in? That's using photoshop. I didn't want to display these as just pure charcoal on paper sketches. I'm not an analog purist neither do I like to do everything digitally. As an illustrator, I want to be open to many ways to create images. I find that combining both analog and digital does open more possibilities on what looks I can achieve. But it does takes restraint not to overdo the digital part. Perhaps it's about using digital tools in such a way that the results still looks like it could have been done entirely with analog tools and mediums. I like this look as using a touch of digital tools gives it some element of surprise.


Below was a sketch doing urban sketching with my daughter Ollie.

And this was at the dentist clinic waiting for Ollie while she got her teeth cleaned.



 

This was simple but I liked it because I collaborated with my 3 yr old son, Toby. I drew a shape on the ipad and he continued with another shape, and so on, back and forth. Animating it produced this. This was some simple and quick to do but I like it because it has meaning to me. This tells me that, perhaps, things don't need to be complicated for it to be enjoyable. It just needs some good meaning? Just pondering here:)

2026 arrived and I didn't quite feel ready for it. End of 2025, there was the family vacation trip to japan, two people I knew passed away which made me sad, I'd just done another year of Youtube videos and wasn't sure what else I want to show (or why), I've been playing around with a camera and learning to take pictures. I was just trying not to solve things for awhile. Turn the switch off. Take a break. Then 2026 appeared and I don't quite feel ready to turn everything on yet. So these are my sketches in my sketchbook these past few weeks. They are a little skittish as I was just dabbling and trying things here and there, not very sure where I want to head toward yet.

I was rather pleased with this page above. I've been liking taking photos with the Lumix S5ii for the past half year, but there is a problem I'm still trying to solve. What do I do with all the photos?! How do I present them to others? And for what reason? How do I create more meaning or add more story to them (like I can do with comics)? So I printed out six of my photos into a sheet of paper and then pasted it into my sketch book, and I wrote and drew over it with a pen. Yes, it's like a comic page, isn't it? I liked how it allowed me to have more connection with the pictures. I especially liked the parts where the handwriting went over into the pictures. I also like how imperfect the photos became when printed on textured paper. On the next page (below), I drew from each of the photos, elaborating more on some of the details I was interested in.

Random sketches, combining different drawing tools. Sometimes, I'd draw from imagination and other times, from direct observation or from a photo I'd shot.






So these are mostly relaxed random experiments, feeling a little lost on where to go next. The year is getting started (well, almost a month in now). But I think it's fine to take time and allow myself to feel lost and just experiment for awhile.

I've been intrigued with tonal values for some time now. Before understanding the light and dark contrasts in a drawing, my drawings tended to look rather flat and I couldn't tell what was wrong with them. Later, I found that adding mid-tones and darks in the right places, an image stands out more clearly. Note that although I did take art elective classes, I didn't major in art. And I learned a lot from books and trial and error.

When I came across comic books by artists such as Mike Mignola and Sean Phillips, I bought and studied them. Their shadows were more intense and black. That was fresh to me. I liked how their use of darks made their images more contrasty or crisp (and simplier?). The blacks would sometimes bleed into each other and also form shapes, obscuring details but somehow made the images even more appealing. And that also gave a clearer sense of where the light was coming from and where the shadows were. Overall, I thought that looked very stylish. Yes, it's a stylistic choice that often works for darker story themes, and not all stories. For example, it's great for crime and monster stories.

Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, Mike Mignola

Incognito, Ed brukaker and Sean Phillips
Trying it for myself I found that, often, I had to make the decision of a mid-tone would be interpreted as black or mid-tone or white. It's almost a game. I don't use in all my drawings. Only when I think it is appropriate. I often find that students starting out in drawing often don't put enough of the darks into their drawings. I do find that it takes some reckless abandonment! Here are some drawings where I intensified the darks and I liked the feel of it.

One way I practice it is to draw from observation and only capture the darks with a brush. I filmed one of my practices here. It is rather long and I probably should have shortened the video. Feel free to speed it up (a lot) if you think it's too long. Or perhaps you'd like to follow and practice along with me, which is what I originally intended, and you can hear me rambling along as I draw haha. Here is the VIDEO.  Quicker version HERE.

Last Saturday, fellow illustrator Ann Gee and I teamed up to teach a comic workshop before the school vacation ends. Combining out teaching methods, we taught the young ones to draw a 3-page action adventure comic, from character design, story tension, crops, pacing to tonal values. Completing 3 pages in 1.5hrs kept us all on our toes and there was no time to overthink or try to perfect things. Just had to do it, have fun and see what happens! They all completed their comics on time!


I had to do the comic myself before teaching them. This is my own simple action adventure comic done spontaneously and very quickly.

Join us next time, you're in Singapore and if we do other workshop like this in the future! We might have classes for adults in the future too. Will see!:)