Video: Mixed media sketchbook tour 2016–2021

I recently completed this Hahnemühle sketchbook that I've been using since 2016. This ended up being one of my favorites, filled with fantasy portraits, floral portraits, animal studies, landscape studies, abstract mixed media experiments, and doodles.

There are two versions of the video.

Long video with explanations of the techniques I used

Short video, no talking

I published my favorite scanned pages from this sketchbook to my gallery.

All my sketchbook tour videos are on this YouTube playlist.

Collection of surreal pencil sketches

I've been working on so many things lately I didn't have the time to update this sketchblog. I refuse to give it up, though!
My recent sketchbook entries follow a surreal theme, and I've been drawing a hell of a lot trees recently.

All of these are drawn with pencil in a Canson sketchbook.

If you'd like to see more of my sketches and works-in-progress, follow me on instagram :)

If you'd like to see more of my finished work, check out my official portfolio and blog NelaDunato.com!

Male figure studies from life

I managed to talk my boyfriend into posing for me again. This was the last drawing of the session, and the most successful one:

This one was the first. The torso is a bit too long and too narrow...

These two were a bit quicker.

I have to practice a lot more, but I'm OK with how this turned out.

More nude sketches

Today's nude sketches from photo reference. On the left digital sketch in Photoshop that I gave up on after realizing how off some things were, and on the right a pencil sketch that went a little better.

Taking the Draw 100 challenge

Recently I stumbled across an excellent site with video tutorials ctrl+Paint. The majority of stuff discussed is something I already know (by reading the same literature the author has, presumably) but there are some things he explains clearer than I have seen anywhere else. And he also mentioned the Draw 100 approach to things we suck at. Like the author of the video, my weakest spot are arms. I'm blaming having very thin arms with no muscles for my difficulty with understanding how arm muscless are supposed to work :P and when I look at muscles in the photos, I'm just puzzled, like I can't accept that they really look that way. They look "wrong" to me. Weird, I know.
Well, here's a batch of 10 arm sets referenced from photos, using a red mechanical pencil and a 2B graphite pencil.

I have tried the "Draw 50 heads in a month" challenge before and failed. It lasted for a couple of days and I managed to make maybe 5 before forgetting about it completely. Now, I won't commit to doing this in a month, but I hope to get to 100 eventually. I probably won't bother you with all of them.