Thoughts on baby drawing

With this wisdom from the KING JIMDRAW BIBLE I try to express what a major pain it is to draw very small children. Due to their youth and undeveloped facial features they can be incredibly difficult to draw. Not so much difficult to draw in the sense of technical skill but in terms of shear boredom.

What exactly can you draw? It is like attempting to draw a ball of dough. There is nothing there, the eyes are closed, the hair is often not there and facial features largely undefined.

With that in mind I have always struggled to draw them when I am asked to. What i ended up doing with them is to go straight into the subtle epidermal layers to find something to draw so I don't fall asleep. This is only possible if you learn how and when to use a HB, H, H2, H4, H5, 2B, 3B, 5B and just maybe a 6B pencil in conjunction with one another. Then you can get something approaching a real representation of human skin.

Perhaps I over did it in this drawing that I did back in 2005. The kid is my niece Lily who is now approaching 13 years old and she now actually has a face to draw. In this one perhaps I have inadvertently given her a skin condition.

So, artists beware, drawing babies is boring, so find some way to make it creatively interesting or have the life sucked right out of you as you fall into a baby drawing induced slumber.