So, I stumbled across Sandra Bettinger’s work the other day. Just scrolling, you know, looking for inspiration, and bam! Her art popped up. It really caught my eye. There’s something about the characters, they look kinda simple but have this specific feeling, maybe a bit nostalgic or something? Hard to pin down.
Anyway, I found myself saving a bunch of her illustrations. Really liked the way she uses colors and the clean shapes. I thought, hey, maybe I can try and capture some of that vibe in my own sketches. Looked easy enough, right? Famous last words.
Getting Started
I fired up my drawing tablet. Grabbed a few of her pieces as reference, mostly character stuff. My idea wasn’t to copy directly, but to understand how she builds her figures and expressions. So, I started sketching.
My first attempts were… well, let’s just say they didn’t look anything like her style.
It’s funny, her linework looks so effortless and clean. Mine felt clumsy trying to mimic it. It’s smoother than you think, with very intentional curves. Getting that balance between ‘simple’ and ‘expressive’ was the real challenge.
- Tried focusing just on the heads first. Getting the proportions she uses, the eye shapes.
- Then moved onto the body language. Her characters often have this distinct posture.
- Color was another thing. Her palettes look straightforward, but picking shades that work together that well? Way harder than it looks. I spent ages just messing with color pickers.
What I Realized
The thing is, you look at art like Sandra Bettinger’s and might think it’s just ‘cute style’. But when you actually sit down and try to break it down, try to do it, you see all the little decisions and the skill behind it. It’s not just random doodling.
There’s a real consistency in her work. The way she renders things, the textures she uses sometimes. It’s a very polished, deliberate style even when it feels loose and painterly. Trying to replicate even a fraction of it made me appreciate the original work a lot more.
Honestly, I was doing this mainly because I was feeling kinda stuck creatively. Needed to shake things up, look at someone else’s process to get my own brain working again. Sometimes just trying to learn from another artist, even if you don’t perfectly get their style, teaches you something new you can use later.
End Result?
Did I manage to draw exactly like Sandra Bettinger? Nope. Not even close. My sketches ended up looking like… well, my sketches, but maybe with slightly different eyes or color ideas than usual. But that wasn’t really the point, was it?
The practice itself was valuable. It forced me to observe more closely, to think about shape language and color harmony in a different way. And it was fun, which is the main thing. Definitely got a newfound respect for her skill. It’s one thing to like looking at art, another to try and understand the ‘how’ behind it.
