How drawing with my cousin made me a better artist
On learning together
I don’t usually engage in audio calls, but when one of my younger cousins said he wanted to call, that was the start.
The beginning of drawing and learning together.
Anything goes
Every weekend (night for me and early morning for him), we would talk online on Discord. It started with just drawing whatever we wanted on a blank canvas using Magma which he discovered. It’s an online collaborative tool that has the basic features of a drawing software like layers and brushes.
*I’m only showing the drawings I’ve made as we’d like to keep his drawings private. Hoping he can share them someday in his own platform and time! My cousin’s super good in drawing and sharing feedback! :-)
We also did a weekly challenge wherein we would take turns to suggest a gesture (someone skateboarding, weightlifting, etc.) to draw, and we’d comment on each other’s work.
“The grip doesn’t look right.”
“You might want to tilt the head a bit more.”
We would base the revisions on feedback we received from each other.
So we began with a very rough sketch and we refine it in the coming weeks, until we got a clean line art at the end of the month. We would draw or write with red on how to improve the other’s work.
Let’s get down to business
Anatomy, along with many other areas like perspective, buildings, and anything mechanical, was my weakness in drawing.
So from free flowing drawing sessions and the weekly gesture drawings on our own, we injected more structure into our learning together by having a reference image.
My cousin would search for one reference image (mostly action poses), and then we would draw it together.
The one on the leftmost was from our very first session where we based our drawings on a reference image.
We have different learning and drawing styles, and it’s nice to see how another artist works. (He would argue he isn’t an artist, but he is. Haha!) He’s more logical than me, and since he’s in engineering, he would see some things I wouldn’t see in my own aesthetic takes.
Before, I would just draw messily, but since we wanted to learn—as in break down the head and body into shapes, define the muscles more, and all that—I toned down the rendering and focused on the drawing.
Below are some of the drawings I’ve made on our sessions! We started to draw together last January 2024. We never skipped a week!
Another lesson from my cousin: if something is a priority, you make time for it.
From messy sketches to rather clean ones
I would color too but only roughly just to practice shading
Trying out different rendering styles
The one on the right was done two weeks ago!
Cleaner line art! I once suggested to him to vary line weight, and when I was drawing one time with the same line weight, he reminded me of variation. Haha!
The one on the right is from last Saturday!
Learning together
Last Saturday, we agreed that we both improved a lot on drawing, character design, and anatomy. I’m thankful we started this last January and built on the habit. We held each other accountable and made time for our sessions. Our sessions would last from an hour to two hours (sometimes, two hours and a half!).
When we begin a drawing session, my cousin would call me out whenever I don’t start with the line of action. Haha! I’m so used to drawing (as a hobby and as my career) that I would forget the most important things.
Whenever I work by myself on client and personal projects, I realized how I would put more time in the rough sketches part, so that when it comes to the line art and colors, it would be faster, because I’ve set the foundation early on. When I have to draw people, I go back to the lessons I learned from my cousin and our sessions.
It’s good to have friends you could draw with, so that learning won’t be solitary. You can be each others’ soundboards for ideas, and you can ask another pair of eyes to check your work for a fresher take.
Even though he lives on the other side of the globe, we’re able to grow as artists. I’m grateful for technology in the way it bridges people and has tools like Magma wherein we could draw together.
Perhaps I can share a step-by-step process sometime: from the line of action to the finished sketch.
How about you? Have you tried drawing with a friend, too, and how has it helped you become a better artist?