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:

My favourite drawings of the year:

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.