Middle School Drawing Archive and Quick Review

This is the second drawing archive. I have easily twice as much material as what I’m posting here, but for reasons of privacy, subject overlap, embarrassment, and so on, I’ve cut most of it down and only picked a few to upload. Due to cost issues, I used a digital camera and post-processing instead of a scanner, and there is some noise from limited lighting control. Descriptions are linked as footnotes in the image captions so as not to interrupt the flow.

7th Grade

A meaningless 3-panel comic^{1 This was a period when drawing was becoming part of my daily routine, and outwardly it was still a continuation of my elementary school drawings. Still, I remember drawing while on school retreats, during the time between arriving at school and morning assembly, and during breaks and lunch — I kept drawing in every spare moment, which shows that I was developing a strong attachment to it. ↩}

From this point on, exam content starts appearing in the notebook

Drew this by inking over a pencil sketch with a ballpoint pen

I rarely practiced by drawing like this

Wavered on whether to post this because the memo is embarrassing^{2 This is exactly the kind of thing that made me hesitate about whether to post it. My sensibilities and tastes back then are different from now, so I naturally wondered whether a drawing this trivial was worth posting despite the embarrassment. Ultimately, I decided to post it — thinking I shouldn’t judge by today’s standards. And honestly, it’s not just me; everyone around that age has corners like this. That aside, back then I was proud of this drawing, thinking I’d drawn it well for once. ↩}

Not long after I started learning Russian^{3 I started learning Russian in October 2015. It wasn’t because I had foreign friends or was going abroad — I was just fascinated by the idea of learning a foreign language from a young age. I wanted to understand it out of pure curiosity, and among languages, I remember starting Russian because I heard it was difficult to learn and thought that sounded cool. This is why occasional Russian doodles with incomprehensible scribbles appear next to my drawings. ↩}

I’ve forgotten almost all of it by now^{4 The best thing about learning Russian was that it expanded my interests into linguistics and the humanities, and I started managing my interests more diachronically. For example, modern linguistics classifies Russian under the Indo-European family, Balto-Slavic branch, Slavic group, East Slavic subgroup from a comparative linguistics perspective. From there, I became curious about what cognate languages belong to each classification, what they have in common and what differs, and how languages came to branch off. This is also why I know about the Cyril brothers, the Tatar yoke, the Goryeo carrot kimchi, Russian Jews in Israel, the chaos of 1990s Russia right after the Soviet collapse, and more specifically, that the Polish greeting “Cześć” shares the same root as the Russian word “Честь” meaning honor, and that Russia shares a medieval state heritage called Kyivan Rus’ with Ukraine and Belarus. ↩}

Also started drawing Eastern bloc firearms

From this point on, Russian expressions started appearing alongside the drawings^{5 Drawing military illustrations was partly influenced by FPS games like Battlefield, but during this period I was also influenced by the anthology project “Combat Maid Company” and its core illustrators like KWS and Shino. Every time I drew, I was conscious of the Picatinny rails, gear, and clothing folds that these illustrators emphasized in their work, and I felt a sense of pride following in their footsteps. ↩}

8th Grade

I think this really shows the social mood of the mid-2010s^{6 I drew an enormous amount during this period. During summer vacation in 2016 in particular, I remember filling every page of thin sketch pads without any blank space, stacking up about three of them. Looking back, it was a period of intense obsession, and I left behind a lot of work — it’s a shame I can’t include the ones from high school along with these, as I lost those notebooks. ↩}

Probably from the Technology & Home Economics exam scope

Preview of Snell’s law

Undertale was incredibly popular back then^{7 A characteristic of this period is that military drawings became more professional and context-specific, while also branching out from stale military themes into other subjects like Undertale. Regarding the latter, other classmates besides me also liked it, so I drew it often, and I remember playing around drawing Overwatch heroes like Genji and Bastion, even if I didn’t include those here. ↩}

Gaster, Undyne

Oh, Sans

I think this was a study of some drawing

One of the few finished pieces

9th Grade

2017 was the maturation period for my art style^{8 9th grade is the period I remember most vividly. The past is always romanticized, but I think it was the last year I lived stably as a proper student in a proper school, so I’m especially attached to it. A warm, stable orange-tinted atmosphere is particularly visible in the mood of the drawings too. There are signs of trying new things in terms of subject matter and composition, and perhaps because of the leisure in life, shitposts are scribbled all over. ↩}

I think I was trying new things like composition

Overwatch starts appearing as drawing material

A glimpse of realism

Drew a lot of things

Learning square roots because I’m in 9th grade

A drawing that a female classmate would look at closely^{9 One afternoon in the fall of second semester, about three guys and three girls were gathered, chatting and drawing. One of them was staring intently at this drawing and quietly murmured, “How about becoming a police officer or something later?” It’s a trivial thing, but this drawing brings that moment back to me. ↩}

I think the essence of the 2010s vibe was creativity over context

It was great having two other artists in the same class besides me

Another finished piece

The military drawings are starting to feel more mature too

Jack O’ Lantern

The era when shitposting was at its absolute peak

Drawn by a different female classmate who was good at studying

Definitely more presentable than 7th grade

I think the drawing subjects are kind of interesting

The drawing that shows up when there’s nothing to do

The drawing that shows up when there’s really nothing to draw

The drawing that shows up when the lack of things to draw is infuriating^{10 While archiving, I also went through my high school practice pads and discovered something. The “drawing I make when I have nothing to draw” first appeared in 9th grade, then consistently continued through high school and into relatively recent times, up to around 2022. For example, in the First Digital Drawing Collection post on this blog, there’s an image caption that says “The kind of drawing you make when you have absolutely nothing else to do,” which has been there since the draft — I think it’s an extension of the same tendency. I was surprised to discover what seems like a subconscious pattern. ↩}

Butter-grilled squid complete

Coffee-spilling comic

Now my art style was decent enough to draw things like that

Don’t remember what mood I lived my daily life in

Something fantastical

7th period with cleaning duty

Chinese was one of the subjects, so ah 吗

Full-body drawings appear quite often

A soldier fully armed with an intense gaze, managing his Facebook^{11 I think my art style and line-work ability were largely completed during this period, both then and now. I will archive and post my high school drawings in the same way within the next two years, but there probably won’t be as dramatic a difference as the change over these three years of middle school. Maybe there won’t be much difference from how I draw now, either. Perhaps it’s because high school left me with no free time, but in retrospect, it was a small and brief inflection point. ↩}

Footnotes