2016 Drawing Recap

We are reaching the end of the year when I decided to learn to draw and paint. This will likely be a many year journey for me, since it brings me such enjoyment and there is so much to learn!

At the beginning of 2016, I was basically afraid to draw lines on a piece of paper. I also remember feeling a little bad about using a drawing or sketch pad, since it felt like a waste of "good" paper that a "real" artist could use.  At the beginning, I used a lot of copy paper (on the back side of paper that was going to be recycled). I don't feel that way anymore. As I write this what popped in my head is that I believe in the democratization of art. Creating art is for anyone who wants to partake and you need any special skills to start. You need knowledge and you need to practice. Really, it's the same as learning to play the piano.

Now that it's the end of 2016, I have several, full sketchbooks and I'm ready to let them go. These days, I have no problem using a sketchbook, but I'm also trying to shed my house of as many objects as possible. The reason for this blog is to capture my journey, so I don't have to keep all of my output. Before these sketchbooks go into the recycling bin, I took pictures of some of the drawings that had significance to me. Many of these have appeared in this blog when I first created them.

For the first several months in 2016, I took several 30 day challenges through Creativebug. For the first one, the artist, Lisa Congdon, demonstrated several ways to draw a certain type of object like a tree, chair, fish, and so on, in an illustrative style. At first, I would only try to draw exactly what she had drawn. With no background in drawing, it was useful. It was primitive learning for me since I didn't get how she decided to add a few hatch marks or side edges to her drawings. One day, the topic was brooms. This is one of the first times I branched out and tried to draw a real object in front of me.

Here is another early example from a Creativebug drawing challenge. I forgot who the artist was. The top light bulb was from the example that was provided. The florescent bulb was drawn from looking at one.

Here is another example from the Creativebug drawing challenges, when I drew items that were in front of me.

This is one of my favorite drawings from 2016. It was also the result of a drawing prompt from a Creativebug drawing challenge. The artist put several pins in a bowl and drew that. It was too hard to try to copy using her set up, so I made my own. I love this drawing. It's one of my first drawings of an entire "scene".  It makes me smile whenever I look at this one. 

In March 2016, I started taking painting classes with Kat Corrigan. In one of the classes, she had us do an exercise that involved doing a value study of an apple using charcoal. It was the first time that I made the connection on how important value is in drawing and painting. I was so excited when I got home from class that I tried a value drawing of a bowl using pencil.

Animals, mostly cats, have been a frequent subject. Here is a very, very early attempt to try to draw my cats. I wanted to capture this, so I can compare it to where I am today and how I hope to continue to develop!

This is one of my favorite value studies of Ella. After a painting did not work, I decided to try a value study before attempting another painting. It's the first time that I tried this and it was also the first time I remember completely losing myself in the shapes and values of something that I was looking at, in this case a picture. I wasn't trying to draw a cat. I was trying to capture what I really, really saw. When I was done, I looked at the finished drawing as a whole and was shocked that it really, really looked a lot like the original picture.

Here's a similar value study of a dog. This is actually value study #2.

For painting, I still rely upon my trusty and faithful grid lines. For sketching, I am trying to branch out and not use them.  This is a drawing from November where I felt like I captured Ella when she was sleeping.

Here is today's drawing. After this long recap, I probably should have some blockbuster drawing to share as the last one of this post. I don't. This is a simple line drawing of Ella and Dorian from this morning. I really enjoy the different ways cats fold themselves up and fold themselves together. I think this drawing closes this post by showing that picking up a pen or pencil and just drawing has become a normal activity for me.