All the (English) words (sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books …) are made up of only 26 alphabets. (Let us leave aside punctuation marks for now 😉)

Similarly, most the (basic) drawing is made up of these 12 basic shapes, hence the visual alphabets.

This English phrase makes it easy to remember

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The idea comes from the book “The Magic of Thinking BIG”

Dr. Schwartz makes a point that just persistence is not enough.

Each time you try (and not succeed) learn from it, and change something (experimentation) only this will lead to (eventual) success.

I tried to show this visually by having different styles the word Try is drawn in the bottom half (but also wrote experimentation - just to be clear 😄)

Once upon a time, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) was all rage. How does your product show up in the Search Engine.

But now a days, people have stopped using search engine. Instead they prefer to “get the answer” from one of the LLM/GenAI

The Search Engines also now have “AI summaries”, so may be AEO can double as SEO 🤷‍♂️

Software: tldraw.com

This is not shared to showcase my skills 😄 But to remind myself (maybe others 🤷‍♂️) that sketching/drawing doesn’t have to be a big deal.

When I make a mental list of things to buy (aka shopping list) I usually write it down if it is more than 2 items (else I’m bound to forget something)

Usually, I write it down as a text (doesn’t everyone ? 🤔)

But today, I thought in images. At first, I wasn’t sure whether I could draw quick sketch for the each item, but it was easy.

I had not planned what to draw today. So I decided to use this time for practice.

Here is the reference

Few things I noticed today.

Having a digital canvas has advantages of being able to zoom in. This came in handy when coloring the hair and t-shirt.

While at normal scale (no zoom) I have to fill a tiny portion so as not to worry. But I lose precision. I am unable color without leaving tiny white/uncolored marks.

This is another one from the same YouTube video I referenced earlier for the Church

This time, I wanted to try watercolors in true urban sketching style (Although this isn’t an Urban sketch 😄)

Hence, Tayasui Sketches.

I chose Water Color Paper to start.

Rather than drawing directly as suggested in the video, I did 3 steps.

First, I drew a rough sketch using Pencil tool. On a water color paper, it gave me a grainy texture. Cool! (I chose a little thicker size)

I came back to tldraw for this one.

But first, here is the inspiration for this sketch :

The video shows how to draw directly using the ink. tldraw was kinds closest to that feel.

There is only one tool for drawing. Call it pen, brush whatever. There is no fancy fountain pen, technical pen, certainly no pencil. No layers.

While tldraw honours prssue sensitivity to an extent, that is about it. There are 4 stroke sizes. I used small for most of the drawing. Used Medium for filing up the trees/grass with green color.

After my last sketch, I kept searching for simple sketching/infinite canvas program, and came across an app simple called “Whiteboard”

The UX is a bit different, but not too difficult. This might be my second favourite after ExcalidrawZ

The sketch is really simple (it is meant to be) The sketch is based on this video by Eva Lotta 🙏

I probably did this under a minute.

But I learnt how to make the stick person look “down”. It is pretty simple. If I draw the eyes a little lower that normal, then it appears as if the person is looking down. Drawing small line instead of just dot helps (I think) While it appears simple, it took me two tries to get it right. (Wisdom came later 😄)

I published my new sketch This appeared on the back of one of the children’s books. I think tinkle

It took me less than 5 minutes, but makes for a good break from work, and lets me keep practicing my art.

The girl appears so happy showing off her new dress (I think) or she is just happy and frolicking. In either case, it is adorable.

If you haven’t, you can check my older sketches here