drawing trouble

Thinking about overthinking and drawing a conclusion (also actually drawing)

Back in this post I wrote the following:

Draw a line every day. Don’t try to do more, don’t try to be perfect, just do a line, every day (or write a sentence every day or throw some clay, or whatever your creative pursuit happens to be). Emphasize quantity over quality and develop your skills without pressure to produce great art every time you sit down (or stand at your fancy sit/stand desk).

Some guy on the internet who looks just like me

I have done a few drawings since then. One every day? No. I have failed. I am bad and should feel bad.

I feel bad.

It’s such a simple premise, but I got caught up in the quest for perfection again. “I can’t just draw junk, it has to be something,” I’d think. And then it would be time for bed, and off to sleep I’d go! Repeat multiple times.

So here I am confessing on the interweb and trying to atone. Will I draw a line today? A mad veggie? I don’t know, but I will draw something, even if it’s junk. I promise!

Recent vegetables I have drawn

Using Procreate and mainly the Studio Pen brush.

Super Spud:

Perpetually worried he may spot a crime in progress.

Angry Carrot and his henchpepper:

Still figuring out shadows and shading.

Looking at Angry Carrot now, I think the body lines may be too thick. I’ll try them thinner next time. Overall, I’m pleased with how these turned out, considering how little I’ve been drawing lately. I shall draw more.

The search for new drawing prompts

I started doing the #makingarteveryday prompts again in January, but took a bit of a break when I was spending a lot of time on art for game projects. By the time I was ready to come back, I found that the prompts had gone off in a wacky new direction, with some kind of journal thing (see here for details). I think this is great and shows some real creativity (and hard work) on the part of Lisa Bardot–but it’s just not what I want to do right now.

And so I have resumed my DDP1Daily Drawing Prompt quest once again. As you may or may not know, certain commercial interests have basically turned any web search for “best of” lists into a blasted, apocalyptic wasteland of sites designed only for SEO and serving ads to you, in the same way Homer was served donuts in Hell. Except if Homer didn’t ironically turn out to enjoy it.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LBcZWIBerf0/hqdefault.jpg
For reference

Trying to find a decent prompt site can be challenging.

There is a site not surprisingly registered to drawingprompt.com. This is what I first saw:

And now I have the image of a Toast Human stuck in my head.

Which might not make for a bad prompt, really.

The site has you click on subjects to generate prompts. It’s like a game where everyone wins or something.

(I don’t know what an Instagram Posers prompt would look like. I’m not sure if I want to know.)

I’ve checked a few other sites and there’s always the weekly Inktober prompts, though weekly is not daily, unless I just draw a tiny bit of the prompt every day over the course of a week. I could always just come up with my own prompts (my brain hurts just having typed that out), or devise a method for generating random prompts, which feels like work and is therefore yuck.

I’m going to give myself a deadline to come up with a plan. That deadline will be:

Sunday, March 20, 2022

This is also the first day of spring, so a good time for fresh commitments!

Making Art Everyday 2022 No. 34: Deer

After being generally displeased with the fox, I wasn’t sure where to go with the deer. I found a reference photo, then traced it using the Technical Pen brush to get a rough shape. I pondered.

Then I added red boots and sunglasses. Why? I don’t know. I also colored the deer using the same brush, using swatches of flat color, almost like you would with a coloring book. I kind of like the way it turned out. It’s different.

I still need to work on ground shadows, though.

#makingarteveryday
#makingarteveryday2022

Tools used:
- iPad Pro 12.9"
- Procreate
- Apple Pencil

Making Art Everyday 2022 prompts