Pencil / Ink

Update: May 22, 2025

I think I figured out what I found displeasing about the original “finished” version of this drawing (the version right below this text), and why I preferred the earlier sketch – it’s likely because I didn’t darken the tops of his eye socks/below his brows, to match the contrast that was in the earlier sketch. I think it gave him the appearance of not having eyebrows, or having too-light eyebrows, which lessened the contrast I liked in that early sketch version.

Changed the date on the drawing to today’s, since it’s a different enough change to me now. Oh! I also meant to mention how the lighting conditions varied a bit through the photos (I’m next to a window) – I tried to adjust the photos to match the drawing as closely as I could to how it is on the paper, and hopefully the lighting doesn’t look too inconsistent.

Original post below:

Malyck warm-up drawing from yesterday when my hand was feeling stiff. Also, I’ve been practicing my letterforms recently – how does it look? Is it too ostentatious? Haha.

I’ve never been fond of how cursive “L” looks when I write it, which has been a small annoyance throughout the years as both my name and pseudonym begin with the letter. I also have always had messy handwriting, and earlier this year when I started using physical notebooks again, it inspired me to try practicing my handwriting to see if I could improve it. 

To my mild horror, I realized so much time had passed since the last time I wrote cursive by hand, I had to look up how to write some letterforms again! This shocked me, because I grew up writing almost exclusively cursive. I remember enjoying writing in it over print/block letters, by a substantial amount. How could I have forgotten? 

Anyway, in my search for a sheet showing basic cursive to remind myself, it lead me to become interested in “scripts” – not programming scripts or screenplays, haha – but styles of calligraphic writing which have been popular in the past (and present!).

I became partial to a script called “Old English Copperplate,” which is a type of handwriting which seemed most popular during the 18th century/1700’s in the west. It has flourishes and embellishments I find aesthetically pleasing, and I also thought they might be useful practice for improving my hand control. As I’ve never been confident in my writing abilities (or fond of how much hand writing looks). Oh! Though, I should mention that while I follow some of the script’s letterform’s, I don’t follow it precisely. The – I think they’re called “descenders?” – but tlike what you see in the lowercase “g” and “y” in “Malyck” and “Landy” written beside the artwork – those aren’t aren’t accurate to the script. They’re fun to write the loops this way!

And, as a bonus, I think it has been improving my drawings when using digital!

I like this drawing more as a sketch (the image captioned “Drawing work-in-progress” above) than how it looked in its original final version, seen above. I tried some small refinements this morning (the top image of this post), which I think helps a bit. But I still prefer how it looked in that earlier sketch version.