Sketching Your Days

I first signed up for Sketchbook Skool in the spring of 2014.  I wanted to get better at drawing. I struggle with proportion, with getting my eye to see relationships as easily as my mind does and then getting my hand to follow! The course was one still offered, entitled Beginnings. Each week for six weeks, there was  a new teacher with new lessons and styles to check out. It turned out to be a great deal for under $100! In addition to the instruction and demos from the teachers,  there is a huge community of class members who write in and show their own progress, struggles, and output.  Some are really experienced and do beautiful work.  Some are absolute beginners and are admirable for jumping in to something new and putting it out there.

I learned a quite a bit. What was even more important than learning techniques was coming to understand what a practice like sketching can do for you.

 

Here is one lesson from Danny Gregory: sketching something as simple as your breakfast can be meditative, can settle you in to your day.  And the funny thing - when I look at this sketch, I remember that morning clearly almost two years later!  I remember being in my daughter's apartment, waiting for grandsons to wake up.  I can see the light coming through the windows, almost hear and smell the soft spring rain.  Now my drawing wouldn't conjure that for you - you'd only see that I had a well balanced breakfast - some toast and cheese and clementine slices and coffee in my favorite Laura Keller mug. But I am there in that morning, waiting for my sweet ducks to join me.