100 Days of Being Creative

For the past 100 days, since February 9th, I have been part of The Creative's Workshop on Akimbo where all participates were challenged to show up daily with something they've worked on, created or thought about. There were days when I didn’t really want to do anything but I showed up so I wouldn’t break my streak.

The Creative’s Workshop has been a great course. Like many things, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. Creating a creative practice is good, but doing this along side a community of hundreds of like minded people was really the highlight of the workshop for me. Showing up with what I did and then reading about what other people were doing was where it made a difference. People commented on my posts and asked questions to get me to dig deeper. I read about their thought process and what inspired them and what was holding them back. It has been an amazing experience and I highly recommend this workshop.

All that said, here's a record of my hundred days of my creative practice.

I finished 42 drawings and 2 sketchbooks, and made 30 videos during these 100 days. Wow!

Enjoy!

The music is Saturday Coffee by William Claeson

Let me know what workshops you have taken that you were really impressed by and that made a difference for you. I’m always on the look out to learn more.

Watercoloring a Seal from the Antarctic

Have you ever seen a photo and been inspired to try to draw or paint it? This is my effort after seeing one of my friend's pictures from a trip she took to the Antarctic. I loved one of the seal pictures she had and she kindly shared the photo with me so I could give it a try.

As you probably know, I work in sketchbooks and do something in one of them everyday. I'm a big believer in keeping and honoring having a creative habit. Working on finishing up this drawing of the seal was today’s effort. I also filmed my painting process and turned that into a video. I have other drawing and painting videos up on my YouTube channel as well.

The video condenses 40 minutes of drawing and painting time into about 6. The seal is done in ink and watercolor. I did the inking of the seal earlier in the week.

The sketchbook I used is a Stillman & Birn Alpha. The watercolors are from Daniel Smith.

The music in the background is At Midnight by Rupert Sachs and At Last Part II by Martin Landh.

https://youtu.be/8Sb6Ns_nBS4

Drawing my dish rack

There was a recent article in the New York Times (May 1st) about drawing and how helpful for one’s mental health it is. I agree 100%. The author, John Donohue, said he draws his dish rack as one of his strategies, so I thought I’d give it a try. Here’s my first attempt. I set up a stool in the middle of my kitchen and drew my dish rack the best I could within a time limit of 25 minutes.

Give it a try and share. 

1st attempt drawing my dish rack.

#sketching #dishrack  #creativity #creativepractice #mentalhealth#dailypractice #creativitycoaching

A Sketch Collage of Snippets

I took a two-hour workshop over the weekend with Sketchbook Skool that gave a lot of ideas of ways to fill up pages in a sketchbook. One of the suggestions fits in with something I already love to do - collage drawings. I do this with my travel journals. This spread was much quicker and more loose and wonky than I usually draw but it was fun.

The suggestion was to take a spread, a couple of pages, in your sketchbook and fill it with drawings of things that you live with and that are around you. It can be done all in one sitting or done over a few days. The drawings could be larger or smaller or exact size to fit in puzzle-wise on the spread. You can keep it as just ink or add color later.

I started with various things that were on my desk or were within arm’s reach. A lot of them turned out to be things that I had been keeping there so I would draw them. I have a dragon from Japan, soap from Portugal, a gift, a picture of my grandmother’s cat, pictures of my departed dog, as well as various odds and end like a Kleenex box, lip balm, a jar of brushed, a small container of ink..

What’s nice about this kind of project is that it can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it. It can also be done in different rooms of the house or it can be a visual diary of a day. Do it with one kind of tool one day, and a different one another day.

Try it and share with me what you drew.

A sketch collage of snippets from my desk

Are you interested in the possibilities of what you can do in a sketchbook? Do you have some ideas but aren’t sure where to start? I am offering a new 6-week workshop: Exploring Keeping a Sketchbook which starts this Friday, May 1st. We will be meeting live via Zoom, 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Pacific time. I will give you at least 5-10 different things to try every week in class and between sessions. Come join the fun and start filling your sketchbook and developing a creative habit.

A Collection of Animal Figurines

I made another video today as I added a couple more animal drawings to my collection in my sketchbook. I have a lot of very detailed and fairly realistic animal figurines that I like to pull out every now and then to practice drawing. They move much less than their real counterparts!

Keeping a regular creative habit is something I’ve been doing for the past several years, if not longer. I’m always working on something. I recently started making videos of my drawing process because of prompting from classmates in The Creative’s Workshop. There we are encouraged to post something daily and in a rough form is fine. That has helped me to get over the hurdle of making videos. I used to think they needed to be “perfect” before I would be ready to post or publish them. But with the class, I have been getting better little by little by setting my goals a little bit higher each time as I learn how to do something. Because of that practice I now even have some video lessons ready for live online workshops.

The video is up on YouTube here. You can find my other videos on my YouTube channel under my name.

Do you have any collections you like to draw?

Pencil drawing of a Moluccan Cockatoo and Video

Continuing with my series of drawing videos for my practice and your entertainment, this is from day 40/100 of showing up and shipping something as encouraged by The Creative's Workshop that I've been taking.

I did a pencil drawing here of a Moluccan cockatoo from my self-created animals from "Life of Pi" list (photo courtesy of wikipedia, book by Yann Martel). In the video you may notice that my pencil lines are lighter and sketchier at the beginning as I get started than later after the shape of the bird has emerged. That's totally normal as you get more comfortable with what you're drawing.

Also, this sketchbook is small and square. For this animal series, I've often needed to add additional paper to get all of the animal in. I knew I was going to need some for this bird so I started off with an extra piece already prepared. 😁

The music in the video is the Happy Farmer. The video link to YouTube is: Moluccan Cockatoo in Pencil

Are you working on any animal drawings now? What kind?

More Inking on My Glass, Mirrors and Reflections Piece

I have been taking a Seth Godin course called The Creative’s Workshop and in it participants are encouraged to show up and ship something everyday for 100 days. Not being too sure of what I would do with that, I decided I would at least work on a drawing or sketch daily. If I did more with making something, great. If not, I worked on a drawing.

Some members in class mentioned wanting to see a short video of my drawing or painting process so I decided to learn how to make videos. They started very simple and now I have the basics down. I have a YouTube channel where I’ve put all my drawing and sketchbook videos made so far.

Today for my Day 32/100 effort, I worked some more on my glass, mirrors and reflections piece from a photo I took at Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. Here is the video link for today’s progress.

I have now all the inking done around the central container. The area I was working in the lower right of the paper didn’t have any pencil guide lines to refer to so I was inking and winging it! The shapes are fairly abstract so accuracy isn’t necessarily so important here.

The video takes about 22 minutes of drawing and puts it into a little under 3 minutes. The music in the background is Haydn No. 3 Op 76 I Allegro.

Do you like these kinds of videos that show some progress on projects? What can you work on for 20-25 minutes to move along?

Inking progress on my Glass, Mirrors and Reflections piece.