The Game-Changer Drawing

That Boosted My Confidence

5th April 2025

Hey Creative Souls, I'm Back!

This week was super hectic for me (trust me, I barely survived lol) but keeping that aside — phir se aa gayi hoon ek naye blog ke saath... kyunki likhne se kaun rok sakta hai mujhe? (Koi nahi rok sakta.)

Meaning — I’m back with another blog because honestly, who’s gonna stop me from writing whatever I want? (No one can.)

What's This Blog About?

So in this blog, I’ll be talking about the drawings and projects I’ve worked on — might sound boring... not just for you guys but for me too haha — but still, yeh toh likhna hi hai!

The Drawing That Changed My Art Mood

Today I want to share about this one special drawing — this one is from November 2020. And this drawing literally gave me the boost I needed back then. I was struggling a lot to create something eye-pleasing — nothing felt “good enough” to me.

But this drawing became the third piece I was genuinely satisfied with.

My Top 3 Drawings (Till Then)

1st one — Shikshanshi Portrait
2nd one — Another fav (story for another blog maybe)
3rd one — This Afro Kid drawing

And of course, in between all this, I was making tons of random sketches just to get that “perfect hand” in drawing.

That Fear: "Do I Still Have It?"

Sometimes I wonder... do I still have that hand? Or has it just vanished in this era of digital art?

This thought makes me emotional sometimes. But hey — pencil and paper don’t pay my bills (at least not for me — for some it does, and I respect that).

Why This Drawing?

Now, about this drawing — it's of an Afro kid that I randomly found on the internet.

The moment I saw this picture... it was like the picture looked straight at me — and I just knew I had to draw it.

What Attracts Me Towards African Faces?

I don’t know why — but African faces just catch me. Their art style, their facial structure — it’s so strong, bold, and beautiful. It feels like their faces already have a story within them... all I have to do is bring that story out on paper.

How I Made This Drawing

So I started this drawing like I usually do — outlining the sketch. And yes, I have this very bad habit of starting with the clothes first (please don't follow this habit haha) because I always end up making the clothes look too good — and later when I work on the face, sometimes it doesn’t match the reference picture.

But till then, I’m already so deep into the drawing that there’s no going back.

Tools I Used

For this drawing, I used a pen-pencil for the outline.

And for shading, I used Apsara shading pencils. Honestly, they are super hard pencils — and to extract the lead properly, I had to rub it really hard on the paper (not recommended).

Instead, I would suggest you guys use Camlin shading pencils — they are way smoother to work with.