As of today, I've officially reached the 14 day mark of drawing every day as I fill up my sketchbook. Tomorrow I'll be moving onto from transitioning my armatures into gestures. Which I will also spend a couple weeks doing before moving onto the next section of my anatomy book: The simplified skeleton/shapes.

So I figure while I do my whole 'learn how to draw' shtick, why not do the occasional reflection journal here on dreamwidth since I ain't doing that on tumblr. The art stuff is gonna be on tumblr once I actually get comfortable showing whatever I make to others. For now though, those images are gonna be classified government secrets in the Nyla Vault. I do wanna share art I make in the future when I get comfortable though.

As for the reflection bit, I've been doing my best to just do the exercises in the book and making armatures from references now that I don't have the samples in the book anymore to follow. And for the past few days, I keep redrawing the armature proportion reference to essentially drill into my head how things should be proportioned. I'll probably keep doing that all throughout the sketchbook. I'll say I'm definitely drawing more compared to my first week of taking up the personal challenge. For most of the days in week 1, I only drew a page a day. A few armatures and the reference doodle from One Piece of a character's face. Now it's more like 2-3 pages of armatures a day depending on my mood, with the One Piece character doodle.

I want to develop a style of my own in the future, but for now since I like One Piece characters so much and do plan to draw fanart of them I'm using Oda's style as a reference to learn how to draw the characters in advance. And I think I mentioned it a journal ago that to keep myself motivated since I'm gonna be in my 'learner' era for a while, I'm drawing characters I like. If it's only the stuff I'm learning, I think I'd get bored of the artwork I'm seeing but it's actually a nice mixup of things.

Armature, armature, amature and then Oh look at that, an Ace or a Luffy or a Sanji or a  Nami or a Luffy or a Bonney! Aside from being really into One Piece, Oda has a pretty simple art style. At least he does to me compared to other mangaka I love the style of but it feels a little complex for me. Like Takaya's Fruits Basket, Yazawa's Nana. Those styles are so pretty to me but because I know it'll take a while for me to develop a style of my own, I'd rather just reference something on the simpler side. I definitely wanna draw fanart for those series though, those are also part of my childhood.

Back to the actual reflection though, I'm a rambler lol. Another thing I've noticed is that I actually look forward to drawing the next day because I get to a point where I'll draw so much I force myself to stop so I don't overexert my hand. Earlier in the journey it was more of an obligation with a reminder of "don't forget to draw today". Like yesterday, I had fun looking up a reference of Nami to draw because it was her birthday and tomorrow I'm already thinking up armatures/gestures I want to draw tomorrow! 

That's really it so far. I'm definitely not drawing any masterpieces or anything, nor will I any time soon but I'm still having a surprising amount of fun despite being in the early beginning stages. I used to draw off and on in middle school but never anything good or fun. I used to be so into FMA that I'd draw from reference panels of characters I liked but anything else I drew would be totally the typical anime character with the hands behind their back lmao. I recently found some of my old drawings from when I was in the 4th grade of my OCs I made, I wanna try redrawing them in December. I'm thinking I might have a couple sketchbooks worth of progress by my 6 month mark and that'd be a fun experiment.

Anyways, I've rambled on enough for now. I'll check in again in two weeks when I'm done with gesture practice and am ready to move onto the simplified skeleton. また今度な！

 This is days late but I'm back to once again talk about my One Piece thoughts. Of course this entirely pertains to the manga (which I guess is clear from the chapter number and my reading tag on the post), so for anyone wanting to avoid spoilers this is not the post for you.

( let's talk one piece )

In unrelated to the chapter OP news, has anyone seen that new Borussia Dortmund x One Piece collab video on the official youtube channel? First the Lakers and now this? We love to see One Piece thrive. I swear, the days the One Piece is revealed and the series ends are going to be the two biggest days in pop culture history. Yes, I said 'two'. I'm pretty sure those are going to be two separate chapters and I am going to cry my ass off.

To stay on track for the oneshots I'm working on, having a deadline to have them posted by is helping me out. I know no one reads these because I'm so new on the platform and it isn't like any mutuals I have on other sites check this place out since Tumblr is still up and running, but it is nice having a spot to post these anyways.

And I guess this is a great place to do title reveals hehe, I normally just put tba on my masterlist on other sites but since no one reads these it's nice to name drop fics here:

I'd Marry You With Paper Rings // あんたと紙の指輪で結婚でしよう

• Posting somewhere between May 5 through May 9
• For ルサンゆる活 WEEK

sweet lies (tangerine-flavored dreams) // 甘いウソ、みかん味の夢

• Posting on May 27
• For a friend's birthday; she really likes fic titles that are lower case (with something in parenthesis) so that helped with coming up with a title format

Into Your Blue // お前のブルーへ

• Posting on June 3rd
• For Lusan Day (ルサンの日)

Working on all three is definitely a challenge but I wanna make sure they're all ready and translated by the decided posting times! I'm just having fun when it comes down to it; it's my first time writing in Japanese for fanfic purposes. Before that it was just a tweet or doing an essay for a class but this time I'm trying to do something purely for leisure and a lot more lengthy than a few sentences. This year I said I wanted to get more involved in the JP side of fandom and well, I figured this is how I should do it. Plus it'll be an interesting way to deal with any plateau I have with Japanese as a language I'm learning. Now... to the drafts!

 in case tumblr gets sent to the gulag, this is here