A year of drawing

Almost exactly a year ago, I started learning to draw. I’d been trying to learn to paint for a few months, and whilst I was having a lot of fun I was starting to feel pretty held back by my lack of drawing fundamentals. Drawing was something I’d been (theoretically) interested in for a while but, with no real aptitude or prior experience, wasn’t something I’d really considered doing properly.

A few motivational youtube videos later, I made a surprisingly firm commitment to giving it a good try. I wasn’t going to dive in like mad for a week, then give up (my usual, bad, approach), but would take it slow and steady. Since then, I haven’t drawn every day, but it’s been more often than not, and I’ve filled a few sketchbooks in the process.

Sketchbooks — My stack of finished sketchbooks

The big take aways for me are that

I enjoy the process of drawing
It’s really hard most of the time
It is possible to learn and improve at it

It’s a pretty wonderful hobby - I get away from screens, create something tangible, have had a lot of fun, and have made real, visible progress over the year. There’s always going to be more to learn and improve at, but I don’t feel too bad about the parts (still most of them) which I’m bad at, because I’m happy enough to be able to do it at all.

These are some of my favourites from the year. Not included - hundreds of ugly pictures and pages full of lines, shading, boxes. It’s a grind at times, but it certainly feels worth it.

Birds have been another recurring subject

A month of drawing every day for Inktober was great. I never would've thought to draw some of the subjects that came up

A quick sketch of the Royal Naval College from across the river. We happened to go during a cold snap, and my hands could barely hold the pen by the end

A flower and rooftop garden — A couple of sketches from a trip to India. It's pretty cool having a sketch book from the trip, rather than just photos. Finding opportunities to draw had a nice side effect of making me pay more attention to my surroundings

A pear — Every now and again I'll do a more fully rendered drawing. They use a surprisingly different set of skills, which is nice for a change of pace

A page full of goblins — Goblins goblins goblins goblins. Did a few pages of these ugly mugs because I wanted to make some tokens for MTG

A churchyard garden — A walled garden in a churchyard

It’s been a big old mix of things, from photos, from life, and from imagination, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d probably make more progress focussing hard on something specific, like figures or landscapes or animals, but I don’t think I’d have as much fun and in the long term that’s probably a better way to keep at it. Here’s to many more years of scribblings.

Written on March 26, 2023