Drawing

“Beauty will save the world.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

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January 1, 2018

All Monthly Books

My 2017 Daily Drawing Project is complete! And here are the December drawings:

Dec 1
Dec 2
Dec 3 4
Dec 5 6
Dec 7 8
Dec 9
Dec 10
Dec 11
Dec 12
Dec 13 14
Dec 15
Dec 16
Dec 17
Dec 18
Dec 19
Dec 20
Dec 21
Dec 22
Dec 23 24
Dec 25
Dec 26
Dec 27
Dec 28
Dec 29
Dec 30
Dec 31
I estimate I spent about 150 hours drawing this year and in addition to the 13 books of drawings (12 Moleskines and a full sketchbook), I have come away with the following:
  1. I learned that, with a drawing habit established, it doesn’t matter how I feel when I sit down to draw. The drawing will start to appear and I will slide into the present moment.
  2. Sometimes drawing is about the subject, sometimes it is about materials and sometimes it is about playing.
  3. The actual subject of the drawing doesn’t matter much – it’s about the exercise of drawing.
  4. I remembered how much I love the feel of the pen or the pencil against the paper.
  5. I need to work on fitting my subject onto my page.
  6. I have a lot of opportunity to improve my technical drawing skills – foreshortening especially.
  7. If I stick with a medium for awhile, I eventually figure it out and may even come to love it.
  8. Apparently I like to draw white objects under harsh lighting.
  9. Shadows are immensely important.
  10. I really like water-based brush markers and working with grey.
Some of my favourite repeat subjects:
Mar 3
May 5
Jan 3
Nov 15
Jan 14
Oct 29

My favourite drawings of the year:

Jan 22
Feb 8
Mar 18
Apr 2
May 24
Jun 21
Jul 3
Aug 30
Sep 23
Oct 23 and 24
Nov 14
Dec 29

I’m prepped for my new 2018 Art Every Day project now and will post each image to Instagram daily and the accumulation of the month’s work each month. In 2018 I will continue to post every two weeks and will rotate between daily drawings, paintings I’m working on and other drawings that show up along the way. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

 

“authorship is a dubious concept…” – Victor Pelevin

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November 20, 2017
“I had never understood my own poetry particularly well, and had long suspected that authorship is a dubious concept, and all that is required from a person who takes a pen in hand is to line up the various keyholes scattered about his soul so that a ray of sunlight can shine through on to the paper set out in front of him.” – Victor Pelevin in Buddha’s Little Finger
August 12, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″

Still not feeling much like painting, so I’m posting more of my drawings from July and August.

July 16, 2017 and July 17, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
July 22, 2017a and July 22, 2017b, 5.5″ X 8″
July 27, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
July 30, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
August 4, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
August 9, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
August 14, 2017, 5.5″ X 8″
August 16, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
August 17, 2017 and August 18, 2017, 8″ X 5.5″
August 23, 2017, 5.5″ X 8″
August 27, 2017 and August 28, 2017, 5.5″ X 8″

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.” – Robert Motherwell

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November 6, 2017

Oct 1 and 2
Oct 3 and 4
Oct 5
Oct 6
Oct 7
Oct 8
Oct 9
Oct 10
Oct 11 and 12
Oct 13
Oct 14
Oct 15 and 16
Oct 17 and 18
Oct 19
Oct 20
Oct 21
Oct 22
Oct 23 and 24
Oct 25 and 26
Oct 27 and 28
Oct 29
Oct 30
Oct 31

October and 31 daily drawings complete. I followed a general theme in October – I set out to capture small spaces. In many cases, this amounted to adding a horizon line in some of the images. It changed my approach somewhat though, so I will count it as a success – even if it’s not obvious to anyone but me. I found myself consistently resorting to my favourite medium of a combination of a Copic pigment pen and the Koi Coloring Brush Pens in warm greys. I really do like the way they blend on the gessoed paper of my Moleskine books. I recently tried out another brand of the markers – the Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Markers. But after a bit of playing with them, I’m not enjoying how they behave. I will spend more time with them before I write them off.

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.” ― William S. Burroughs

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October 9, 2017

Sep 1 and 2
Sep 3 4
Sep 5 and 6
Sep 7
Sep 8
Sep 9
Sep 10
Sep 11 and 12
Sep 13 and 14
Sep 15
Sep 16
Sep 17
Sep 18
Sep 19
Sep 20
Sep 21
Sep 22
Sep 23 and 24
Sep 25 and 26
Sep 27 and 28
Sep 29
Sep 30

Another month of daily drawing complete. I had wanted to work on a grey ground this  month, thinking I’d play with adding white, but I didn’t find myself all that interested in it when I sat down each evening to draw. I also found the texture of the grey gesso different than that of the white and it wasn’t as nice to work with. It was a bit of a push to do these drawings this month. Hopefully I will find more energy for it in October. I am starting to think about what my project for 2018 might look like…

“We go forward, looking in the rearview mirror.”- Marshall McLuhan

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September 25, 2017

July 8, 2017, 5.5” X 8”

I have just not felt like painting lately. I’ve done a bit here and there, but nothing that has amounted to anything. Instead of paintings, today I’m posting some of my favourite drawings from my current sketchbook. In January I started my daily drawing project in order to improve my drawing skills. In June I realized I was not seeing the improvement I had hoped to, so I started a fresh sketchbook with the intention of drawing 30 minutes a day minimum – including the time I put into my daily drawing. It’s gone well and I feel like I’ve been a bit more experimental and playful as a result. Here’s a small sampling.

June 22, 2017, 8” X 5.5”
June 24, 2017 a and b, 5.5” X 8”
July 2, 2017, 5.5” X 8”
July 6, 2017 a, 5.5” X 8”
July 6, 2017 b, 5.5” X 8”
July 9, 2017 a and July 9, 2017 b, 5.5” X 8”
July 9, 2017 and July 10, 2017, 8” X 5.5”
July 12, 2017, 8” X 5’5”
July 13, 2017, 8” X 5.5”

“The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky

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September 11, 2017

Aug 1 and 2
Aug 3 and 4
Aug 5 and 6
Aug 7 and 8
Aug 9
Aug 10
Aug 11 and 12
Aug 13 and 14
Aug 15 and 16
Aug 17
Aug 18
Aug 19 and 20
Aug 21 and 22
Aug 23 and 24
Aug 25 and 26
Aug 27 and 28
Aug 29 and 30
Aug 31

Thirty-one hand drawings complete. All done in black Copic Multiliner pens and Sakura KOI Watercolor Brush Pens in three shades of warm grey.

Some thoughts:

  1. I liked working with this combination of pens. The Copics did not bleed with the grey pens and the grey pens blended nicely on the gessoed paper. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but it might be nice to find a colourless blender pen to soften the transition between the lightest grey and the white of the paper. I may have to explore that.
  2. Hands are made up of really weird shapes and can look pretty bizarre from different angles
  3. I found it very valuable to focus on the shapes I was drawing, and not the fact that I was drawing hands. I was specifically thinking about drawing this fold in the skin or that bump of flesh or wrinkle and not about fingers or finger nails.
  4. I enjoyed drawing the baby hands the last five days the most. The cute little chubby knuckles and pudgy fingers were more fun to draw than my own hands – especially when mine often came out looking old and claw like.
  5. It is far easier to draw someone else’s hands than my own. I had to tape my sketchbook down to keep it from moving and then do a lot of squinting. And I would inevitably move my hand during the drawing and notice it only at the end when things didn’t quite line up as they should. I am very appreciative of my kids’ willingness to play hand models for me when they could.
  6. I only drew from photos a few times – including the baby hands. I try to draw from life for the simple reason that I am here to learn and to develop my skills at flattening reality. If I have the camera doing that flattening first, I am limiting my opportunities to improve.
  7. Overall I like the result of the August drawings and might have to take up a another theme in October. It helps not to have to try to decide what to draw each day. And surprisingly, I didn’t get bored with the repetition.

“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art–we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.” – Anais Nin

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July 31, 2017

July 1
July 2
Jul 3
July 4
July 5
July 6
July 7 8
July 9 10
July 11 12
July 13
July 14
July 15 16
July 17 18
July 19
July 20
July 21
July 22
July 23
July 24
July 25
July 26
July 27 28
July 29
July 30
July 31

Another month complete – thirty-one drawings and fourteen paintings made it a busy month. I’m taking some time to draw conclusions from my painting challenge and will post them together in two weeks with those notes.

“If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.” – Seth Godin

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July 3, 2017

June drawings complete and all in one place:

June 1 & 2, 2017
June 3, 2017
June 4, 2017
June 5 & 6, 2017
June 7 & 8, 2017
June 9, 2017
June 10, 2017
June 11 & 12, 2017
June 13, 2017
June 14, 2017
June 15 & 16, 2017
June 17, 2017
June 18, 2017
June 19 & 20, 2017
Jun 21
June 22, 2017
June 23, 2017
June 24, 2017
June 25 & 26, 2017
June 27 & 28, 2017
June 29 & 30, 2017

Last summer I challenged myself to draw every day in the month of July. I’m not sure I saw a lot of improvement over the course of the month, but in the end, I was pleased with my small book of ink and watercolour images. These were my favourite drawings coming out it:

July 5
July 9

My intention with my 2017 drawing challenge was to improve my drawing skills. Yet, six months in, I haven’t seen the dramatic change I had hoped for. My ability to accurately foreshorten objects is still atrocious and creating volume is hit or miss. I decided that I need to change something in order to see the return I’m looking for – I need to put more effort in and actually work to improve rather than just show up. So I’ve upped my game and committed to drawing for a minimum of 30 minutes each day. Now, before I pick up my Moleskine to do my daily drawing, I begin in my sketchbook – playing with different media or styles or maybe doing a blind contour or other drawing exercise. So far I’m pleased with the result and a little excited about where this might lead.

In June I started out playing with different media each day and that was fun – for a while. Unfortunately, my little Moleskine books have thin pages and I gesso and sand them to eliminate show-through. This creates a fairly smooth, not-very-absorbent surface that limits which media perform well. I’m currently pretty attached to a combination of Copic Multi Liners and KOI Coloring Brush Pens. But rather than commit to a medium or particular items to draw, this month I’m just going to go with what I feel like. We’ll see how it turns out.