I found this Creative Commons photo of a squirrel and used it to sketch using a grid, more or less mechanically copying, instead of creatively building from simple shapes. It more or less looks like a squirrel, unlike what I’d probably have drawn by eye alone. I should do both, though, if I ever want to draw a squirrel (or, frankly, anything) from imagination. The grid would’ve been a good guide to place the parts of the animal, as well as draw them in the correct size. I suppose that’s for a next sketch.

As can be seen from the process video below, guesstimating the proportions by observing is still a bit off. I thought the squirrel fitted inside a square, but the bounding box turned out to be slightly less wide. Still it was a good first guess, and had I constructed this critter from circles, ellipses and lines without a grid, it would’ve been not so off-model as I first thought. I suppose that means my sense of proportions is improving as I do these daily sketches.

The sketch then was a bit of a letdown, in the sense that I wasn’t really into sketching the squirrel anymore. It had become “too technical”, so I rushed through the scribbles. Slowing down by using a construction method instead of copying lines from a reference should make me pay more attention, and get into the right mindset.

It all about size and placement, and enjoying the process. Next time if I notice I don’t experience the latter, I should stop and consider why that is.