I tried my best to stay consistent with filling in sketchbooks, daily sketching for practicing techniques, as well as, … keeping me sane from my turbulent life. Here comes some of the best pages in my sketchbook in 2024.

I found joy in learning to sketch costumes, starting with historical dresses and gowns from history since they were layered or made of different textiles allowing movements to be subtly depicted. Or maybe I’m biased towards modern fashion, particularly mass-produced and fast fashion.

These sketches are copies of works by Charles Dana Gibson, who created the “Gibson Girl” – an iconic representation of American woman in 20th century. His sketches were lively, comical yet with a sense of reality, I find him a great source to learn sketch costumes.

Together with new interest in costumes, I still find sketch houses, churches, etc basically everything architecture relaxing. Perspective used to be a huge obstacle, but but I get loose with it now, just eyeball every detail. Of course, for professional works, I still create a perspective grid to make sure things fall in their places; but with sketching, I think it’s better to distort, twist and play with it.

Mostly of my sketches are done with black and purple ink, but I’m slowly get familiar with all medium as well. With that being said, ink forces me to think and plan in my head before letting the ink reach the paper, because, whatever mistakes I make, the marks will stay permanent on the paper.

I’m still figuring things out, still experimenting with different mediums, and still making plenty of mistakes , but that’s part of the fun. So, here’s to more sketchbooks, more messy lines, and more moments of getting lost in drawing.