Sometimes finding the time to work on art can be a little tricky, we all have so much going on in our day to day that even finding the time to sketch can be hard. For some time now I have been wanting to incorporate daily sketching and push myself to maintain healthy artistic habits. I found that not doing art has led to a lot of anxiety or negativity in my mental health, being hard on myself or feeling inferior as an artist, which is pretty easy to do these days given our exposure to social media. So about 2 months ago I decided to take control of my artistic learning and formulated a plan for myself to get at least 30 minutes of drawing time each day, which I was hoping would help with mental health.
I started by finding the time on my lunch break during the work week. I work a full time job and decided that I could use my lunch break to do some sketching. So each day (especially at the beginning) I would sketch anything, it didn’t matter what, or even producing something that was “portfolio worthy” all that mattered was spending that time sketching.
This approach to art has helped in a lot of ways. My mindset hasn’t been focused on producing beautiful art, but rather the process. This has allowed me to open up with my sketching and to see that part of the process as something to have fun with again rather than always trying to make everything I draw perfect. That way of thinking has led to a lot of anxiety when doing art, so much so that I was finding it easier to not do art at all, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the mental health side of it, which of course was detrimental to my progress and art. The time spent on these sketches has had a great impact on my artistic abilities. My observational skills have increased as well as my draftsmanship. As you will see from the sketches below, everything is done in pen and ink, which forces me to really be careful with my mark making but to also commit to what I’m putting down as you can’t erase like graphite.
Below is a collection of my sketches that I completed between April to July. I had a lot of fun doing every one of these and really pushing myself to have fun and experiment. I tried to keep everything drawn from direct observation, which I prefer, but there were some cases I relied on photo reference that I took. Enjoy!
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