This is kind of a monkey-off-the-back drawing for me. Everything seemed to go against me while I was trying to finish off this drawing.

Some of you might remember when I talked about how I'd been struggling to start a new drawing. Then I watched Olympic games and got inspired by those hi-tech VDO replays that captured all the action shots in super slow-motion. I wanted to capture the same stunning shots with my own hands.

And then there's Michael Phelps. He inspired me to go to the place I'd never been to and I ended up choosing this picture --> [link] as the reference simply because it looked like the hardest picture to draw from.

Then I reached the difficult parts, one after another, and realised I'd need to spend a lot longer than I thought to finish this off. To make it worse this picture had none of my favourite parts, hair and eyes. I got discouraged and distracted by a few things and ended up putting this drawing on hold for months.

Then a few weeks ago I got inspired again and wanted to draw so many things. I swored to wouldn't start those UNLESS I finish off this one first. Sorry for the dodgy parts on some details but I was really at the end of my patience.

Please don't ask me how long did it take to draw this one because I have no idea. It never took this long to draw one portrait and it's not even one of the pretty ones!

A4 Canson drawing paper (the smoother side) + HB-2B technical pencils + 7B-9B wooden pencils

My next drawing is gonna be an EASY one!

* (C)2008 Diego Azubel. I lost the original link to the ref photo. It's been a long time and I can't remember where I got it from for the life of me. .

**I took the photo of the drawing in progress just in case... -->[link]