Happy New Year, y’all!
2022 made me realize that once again I have no New Years resolution. Not a big deal of course, until I realized that the only NY resolution I ever kept is 25 years old now.
Back in 1997, I decided to be a resolute artist (just to work in the “resolution” word there). I made the decision that if I were to be an artist, I would be an artist every day. This meant that I needed to do
at least a drawing a day.
So, I started up in a sketchbook I had. Subject matter varied: I could do nature scenes, figures, still lifes or fantasy stuff (cartoons and REH-influenced drawings). Sometimes it was a very detailed drawings, sometimes a few scribbles, usually in-between. Sometimes it was ultra-personal or understandable to nobody but me but I quickly decided to make it drawings-only, no journal-like entries. I didn’t want to wear my heart on my sketchbook.
The first 8 months or so I was not entirely diligent, as I skipped a few days willy-nilly. But soon I developed the repetitive pattern and muscle memory, where it felt weird at the end of the day if I hadn’t done a drawing. And then it was part of me and still is to this day.
The last nearly two years now, as I’ve continued my daily drawing exercise, finding myself drawing away (pun intended) from fantasy and cartoon art in my sketchbooks and doing a lot more nature subjects. This is because my Pandemic Paintings have taken me there and it feels ok. I can still crank out cartoons or Conan stuff ok, I’m just diggin’ the dunes right now.
So that’s a little slice of me today and here’s my daily sketch, done from a photo I took at Indiana Dunes National Park.
For the nuts and bolts folks: I draw mostly with pencil now, either a 30 year old Pentel mechanical .07 with 2B lead, or a variety of soft wood-clenched pencils (4B, 6B, 8B, 9B) sharpened with a pocket knife and then rubbed on a sandpaper block. I use Bee Paper’s PEN SKETCHER 8.5″ x 11″ sketchbooks (the name belies the true nature of the toothy surface).
Hope you all are doing ok as we start up a new year. I’m hoping a miracle happens and some folks wise up but until that happens, y’all take care