4/26: Day 36
A little watercolor and ink owl for today.
4/27: Day 37
Two things I wanted to play around with for today’s drawing. First I wanted to play with line weight. I tend to sketch and draw with just a single weight and while that’s fine, it’s not using ink to its fullest potential. Today I wanted to show a little more variety and style by adding heavier lines toward the bottom of each feature on this monster. I love how it came out and will definitely do more of this in the future. Secondly, I tend to draw the entire image within the frame of the paper and today wanted to play with only having part of the creature on the page. I also love this aspect of this drawing. I didn’t have to deal with drawing his bottom half, which made getting this drawing done much easier, and it’s interesting to look at too.
Really love this one, and also really wish this was a real live creature I could hang out with.
4/28: Day 38
No art today. I feel bad not having made something, but I didn’t make something because I felt bad. I had a tough day. This pregnancy is wearing on me, I spent a lot of today crying and working. What really sucks is that making art probably would have helped me to feel better today, but I still didn’t do it.
I’m not giving up, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
4/29: Day 39
I tried to rush through my drawings today and they came out SO bad. So bad I almost don’t want to share them, but I’m going to because so many artists only share their best work, and it doesn’t show the reality of this life.
Artists make bad, ugly art. All of them. Leonardo Di Vinci made ugly art. So did Van Gogh. All of them. You don’t get to the point of making good art without making bad art, the bad art is what paves the way for the good stuff.
I wish more artists would share their crappy artwork because it’s so encouraging to those who are just learning to see that everyone makes mistakes, and everyone starts somewhere. No artist in the history of time picked up their first pencil and made amazing art. It always takes time and practice, and practice means you’ll make stuff you don’t like.
Another lesson for today- good art tends to take time. You can’t rush it. You can’t pump it out. It needs attention, love, and focus to be good.
I’m not going to re-make or try to fix any of these crappy doodles, I’m just going to simply show you that not every day needs to be perfect or amazing, the point is to keep showing up, and keep doing it. Just because today’s drawings suck doesn’t mean that the same will happen tomorrow.
4/30: Day 40
I’m loving doing close ups of creatures, there’s a lot of fun to be had with up close detail and cropping. This monster guy started with just his giant eye, then I added the lip and a tiny bit of background. I like him, I might do another blown up version to see what he looks like whole, even I don’t know!
5/1: Day 41
Another day, another monster. I did this guy with a micron pen, definitely fun to draw but feels like something is missing? I’m not sure what, I’m going to let it go though. Not every drawing needs to be perfect or even finished. The point is to do them, every day.
5/2: Day 42
I got out my favorite brush and some cartooning ink today for this cute little bear. I love how super simple lines can speak volumes. This whole drawing took me less than a minute but I love how it came out. I guess my earlier in the week proclamation of ‘good art takes time’ isn’t always true. But is anything always true, really?
