Before this drawing, I’d only done simple sketches — a few cute characters, a fish, an elephant once — but nothing that really asked me to see. After the college project that nearly convinced me to quit, this was the first time I tried again for myself.

I used mostly Prismacolor pencils layered with Polychromos and erasable colored pencils for the sketch, plus pastel chalk for softness and a bit of black ink for contrast, all on Strathmore’s Toned Tan sketch paper.

This piece is what flipped the switch — the moment I stopped doodling and started learning to see.