Welcome to Vega’s weekly Art Dispatch, issue one - the inaugural volume!

I'm going to document my journey of improving my drawing and lifting my skill level out of self-taught, amateur doodler to something more purposeful and professional. I plan to send out this dispatch every weekend, as a showcase of what I'm learning and what I've produced.

Study Art

This week's exercises:

• Finished a two-week round of tracing studies of the human body, using nude models from Croquis Cafe. Traced over photos of models, then drew them again by observing and then constructing. I think I have a better handle on male and female proportions. I'll come back to this exercise again someday.
• Abstract linework (straight & curved) warmups continue.

Current study focus:

Drawing human heads the Loomis way, by way of the free video library at Proko.com. A big hole in my self-taught skills has been filled in!

I learned a kind of simple head construction method when I was learning to draw back in the depths of childhood, which I'd used all throughout my life. Problem is, I didn't learn it fully and so I ended up applying it randomly, and that was insufficient for drawing proportionate human heads. Now I know that I'd learnt an abbreviated form of the Loomis head, and there was more to the construction technique when applied to humans. Now I've learned how to do it properly!

I'll post my progress on human heads in the next Dispatch.

Fun Art

Apropos of other artists' "Before and After" progress drawings, I decided to revisit an old sketch.

Before (drawn no later than 2016, when I was still doodling sporadically and not taking art too seriously);

After (drawn on 6th December, after starting an art course in July and drawing every day for about 4 months):

The difference: I used a pose reference, and have worked on producing cleaner linework. There's no substitute for "drawing every day" if you want to get better!

If all goes well, I will be back next week with the second Art Dispatch. Here's to making it a regular habit!