https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbUbUMRni84

I am physically incapable of growing a beard, which is weird because my dad had to shave, like, twice a day. But the men on my mom’s side all lacked facial hair so I guess I take after that side. On the plus side, they all kept their hair well into old age. Anyways, it’s kind of a toss-up whether Dyson will have much facial hair or not. But now he’s ready!

Also, this kinda started with No-Shave November which I participated in once, but nobody noticed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkmryQQWLwU

In a bizarre twist of fate, I became an engineering manager at work last year. And shortly thereafter, everyone that was reporting to me decided to go to a conference in Japan. I hadn’t planned on going to the conference (because I was feeling kinda travelled out from work stuff already) but what with my whole team going, the fact that I was their manager, and I also happen to speak Japanese, I decided to go.

I thought it might be handy to teach them some Japanese before we went and then I figured, I might as well make a video about it. So here we are.

My brother has been doing Inktober for a couple years and last year, he posted a sketch wishing me a happy birthday. At the end of his post was a picture of a sketchbook, ink, and some pens. I thought that was a pretty cool gift and decided I was going to commit to doing one drawing a day for Inktober myself.

Well, it turns out that his last picture was of a sketchbook, ink, and some pens that he bought for himself and it coincidentally arrived around my birthday. But by the time I realized that, I felt mentally committed to the idea of doing a drawing a day, so I decided to go through with it.

I usually spent a couple hours on each one, split between thinking of an idea, sketching some ideas, doing a pencil drawing, inking it, and coloring. For the inking and coloring, I used a set of brush pens that I got at a Japanese stationery store, which were fun to use but kinda limited in color. In particular, it was tough getting shades of brown. I feel like my drawing style is all over the place, but there are a few that I felt pretty good about.

The drawings are all on my Instagram account but they’re here as well: