So, clearly I had a big break in my streak. We welcomed our son into the world on 5/18 and life with a newborn has been all consuming. Labor was long (72 hours) and rough. Recovery from the emergency c-section has been difficult and slow. Taking care of a newborn has been way more demanding than I ever thought it would be. So my daily drawings lapsed, along with the majority of the things I used to spend my time doing, so I could focus on more important things, like sleep, food, rest, and basic cleanliness. I’ve been wanting to get back into this project and with every day that passed I was feeling more and more bad about not starting back up again.

For the past week I’ve been trying to figure out HOW to get back to this Daily Draw project. I want to continue this, it’s important to me, and it’s more important that I keep it up than it is that I do it perfectly. High anxiety mixed with perfectionism was making it hard for me to get back to it.

I thought about ‘making up’ all the days that I’ve missed. I didn’t want my perfect streak to end, but the fact is, it DID end. I didn’t draw every day for the last 30 days. I didn’t draw at all. And drawing 30 drawings in one day wasn’t going to make up for the fact that I didn’t draw at all for a month.

I came to this realization when I compared this project to other types of habits that someone could aim to do everyday. If this was a project in exercising for 30 minutes everyday and I missed a whole month of it, would I exercise for an entire day to make up for lost time? No.

So I’m not going to do that here either. I’m simply going to pick it back up and try to stick to it everyday. Life is not about being perfect and fitting into a little box. This project is meant to make a better artist, not to make me feel about not hitting every target.

6/10 – Day 53

Back in the saddle again, first time trying to get a drawing done while caring for a newborn. It wasn’t easy! It took me over an hour to get this done even though the actual drawing part was only a few minutes. I drew in between feeding sessions. I like this guy, he reminds me of the creepy animatronics they had at chucky cheese when I was a kid, I don’t know why though.

6/11 – Day 54

A cute little hippo inspired monster for today!

6/13 – Day 56

I hated this drawing through 3/4 of it, then liked it in the end. Just serves as a good reminder to push through the tough parts of art because a lot of the time, something good is right around the corner.

6/14 – Day 57

This guy legitimately creeps me out but I still love him. I used the Pentel pocket brush for this one.

6/15 – Day 58

I’m exploring more into abstract monsters. I wanted to focus just on creepy eyes for this one, mission accomplished!

6/16 – Day 59

Experimental shading on this robot. I used a micron pen to lightly fill in the design. I love it, going to play more with this style!