I completed my sketchbook project a few days ago. It started out I was going to participate in Inktober and then it became Drawtober, and then it just became the Sketchbook Project when I decided to fill the sketchbook with a drawing everyday and not to stop at the end of the month.
Wow. What a great project. I am really glad I did it. I had a lot of fun with it, amazingly.
It wasn’t what I expected at all, and that’s without having any setup, guidance or ground rules beyond that I had to draw in the sketchbook every day. I could draw other things too, but they didn’t count towards my daily sketchbook drawing. It had to be in the sketchbook. Even with those few parameters I must admit, at first, I was a little daunted. I wasn’t sure I would be disciplined enough to do it. After all, I was the only person I was accountable to for doing it. After a while, that wasn’t an issue at all.
The hardest part of the whole project was deciding what to draw each day. This was the case from the very beginning. It got a little easier when I started using my book on frogs and the book of Australian birds. But there was still the challenge of deciding which one to draw. When I started thinking of things that might be fun to draw and finding reference photos, that helped. I would find two or three great references to work from, or even two or three different creatures to draw and that would give me a couple of days that I didn’t have to figure out what to draw.
The next biggest challenge was time. I wasn’t starting my drawings in the morning and working on them all day. I was usually starting after dinner, and sometimes even later. They were one of the last things I did for my day. At first, because of what I was drawing, and the fact that I was sitting on my couch while I was drawing, they didn’t take too long. Most took less than and hour. At some point I decided to clean off my art table and adjust it back to an angle and start using that. I think that’s when the draw times crept up from an hour to an hour and a half and even two hours. And I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t rushing through to get it done by a particular time. It took as long as it took. The point was to do the drawing to a reasonable likeness in a relatively short amount of time.
Relatively short is, well, relative. Many of my drawing in the past that have had lots of detail and thorough shading have taken me several hours over several days. So, a couple of hours is relatively short. But I’ve read about people that can do something like I did for this project in a matter of minutes. I hope to get to that point. And this project is a step towards that.
Which brings me to, what did I get out of it? And would I do it again? I’ll answer the last question first. Absolutely. I would do it again. In fact, I’ve started Sketchbook Project 2 which I’ll tell you about in a moment. As to what I got out of it. That might be harder to answer, but I’ll try.
First off, plain, and simple, I got practice and discipline. I got to refresh my drawing skills. While I have created a few pieces in the last couple of years, I have not created near as much art as I have at times in years past. And even then, some of that was not as consistent. Drawing practice is not the same as creating something 3D in the computer. It requires a somewhat different skill and way of seeing things. So, it was good to really exercise those muscles.
I also got a renewed appreciation for my own ability. Just before I started the project, I was looking through some old sketchbooks and was surprised at some of what I found that I had done. All pleasant surprises. It was not like I was looking at all of it and cringing. Rather I was looking at it somewhat surprised that it was my work. And yet it was. There it was in my sketchbook with my signature or initials. I just didn’t remember creating some of it. I had stepped away from drawing on a regular basis for so long that I had forgotten what I could do. I think sometimes we can get lost from the art in us and then we forget what we can do until we are reminded. This project was that reminder for me. And not because the pieces that I have created in the last couple of years weren’t good, more because, once I had working a plan, I was creating good pieces in a short amount of time, every day. It showed or reminded me that I can do that.
And finally, the best thing I got out of it was fun. I had a lot of fun with the creatures I chose to draw. There are a couple that I didn’t get to that I still want to do. Besides birds and frogs, as a challenge to myself I chose some things that I would not have thought I would draw. As example, I don’t like bugs, and yet I saw a really cool spider and decided to draw it. And the Stag Beetle was cool to look at, so it needed to be drawn. I also found, in looking for creatures to draw, that nature, has a sense of humor, and is great inspiration for sci-fi characters, as well as human characters. There is a turtle that reminds me of something out of the cantina scene in Star Wars. That was fun. The screaming Cassowary was amazing to draw. And the Kookaburra made me think of a person I know.
For the very last drawing I was going to draw another frog, but I was struggling with it and decided that since I only had a short amount of time to work on it, I would start over and do something else. I chose to do a preview of the next sketchbook project. So, I did a sketch of a guy making an interesting face.
And that’s the next sketchbook project. I have this great book of facial expressions that I bought for reference several years ago. I decided that I will fill a sketchbook with daily drawings or sketches of various facial expressions from the book. I’ll go into a little more detail and reasoning behind the project in another post because I have some history with drawing faces and there is more to tell. I just wanted to share a little heads-up as to what I had moved on to after finishing the Sketchbook Project 1.
I’m sharing a few more pictures from the sketchbook project for your enjoyment. I’m still working on how and where I want to present all of the pictures, in chronological order but I hope to have that ready soon. I’ve been working on several other things as you might have noted from the Snowball article. Those continue and I’ll have an update on some of that soon as well so stay tuned to this blog for lots more projects and updates.
