247 days in. (No 365 this year)

This sketchbook now spans one full year. Aug '10 to Aug '11. (Here, from just over a year ago, when I was preparing to make the jump to this book.) I've marked this period on the edge of the pages in red and black: noting the passage of time in visual ways being a personal quirk.
Wonder how long it will take to fill the remaining pages? Almost two thirds of the way through right now. Here's what the one year page looks like (not a planned page, just the randomness of how the marks fall):

This year filled up good and well with so many real art jobs that the 365 exercise is indefinitely on the back burner. But here's the set with what I have done and continue to do in sketchbooky marking making, for this year.

draw365 for 2011 (49 days in)

Now that I'm 49 days into 2011, I have a bit of a system going that is working quite nicely.


On the one hand I am doing these work-in-progress pages, where I add (or take away) a little every day and the way they are photographed becomes part of the piece.

On the other hand I am uploading old drawings from sketchbooks past. It has been good to re-visit them, diving through the history of my brain's creative pathways. Yes, not technically "a drawing a day" .. but I am already drawing every day on other projects, so, I don't sweat it. Right now I am picking and choosing from three sketchbooks that span across 2002 and 2006 but will branch out to others as well. (I have a lot of old sketchbooks.)

It's been nice, because neither of these systems is too time consuming while still being a good outlet for exploring, experimenting, and remembering.

Maybe I'll have changed it up when another 50ish days have passed. We'll see.

Now for your entertainment, a slideshow of 2011's 365 so far:

bleeding pages

30 of 365, originally uploaded by galendara.

Just now I added that gash on the left-hand side of this work in progress page. Bleeding pages. (Because Brandilion said so yesterday :))

Truth be told, while my pages have sustained many_wounds_before, I am not feeling all that cut up at the moment (thank the elder gods). In fact, today I have spent the afternoon up to my elbows in green fabric, creating fun squishy organic thingies (something a tiny bit like this.) (Maybe pics will be forthcoming. We'll see if they turn out.)

So it was kind of an odd shift to put a gash on this page just now. BUT... I did need something easy to use as my drawing of the day, and I am so very adapt at bleeding_stabbing_wounds. So.. there you go.

(What? Morbid? Me???? Never. :P)

drawing under drawings

(Warning:: Contains some NSFW images)

This past Christmas I collected a bunch of scrap pieces of paper (mostly white butcher paper and torn brown paper bag stuff) in order to spin out a bunch of little doodles and finish off my draw365 project.
By the end of the day, I had succeeded. But looking at that page of little doodles I knew it was not finished. I HAD to add connective tissue to those doodles, in and out and between; on top of, and under, and around all those separate scraps of paper. So I did.

Here is the page as it is now on the surface, and then as it looks as you lift each consecutive layer of doodles to see what lies beneath. (Like, undressing the drawing.)

(And, sry about the blurriness, something is wonky with my camera's lens ::grimace::)



Of course, looking these pics now I realize I simply must add drawings to the UNDERSIDE of those little doodles!! #amdrawing.

365 days. (Finishing 2010. Looking at 2011)

On Christmas day while hanging out with family, I gathered a bunch of little pieces of scrap paper and spun out a whole bunch of small doodles. For fun. But more especially, to finally wrap up my 2010 draw365 project.

This has been a formative little project for me, begun mostly on a whim back at the beginning of January this year and becoming a pretty important part of my artistic development and artistic opportunity. It's also fascinating to look at a couple of posts I wrote during the year as the project progressed: early on at 31 days in, then at 65 days, and again at 276 days.... Mostly it's a fascinating awareness that I am a much more experienced artist now than I was 365 days ago.

So now I am looking at 2011 and thinking about what sort of 365 project I can do for this year; originally I was thinking that I might change up the emphasis; concentrate specifically on a certain medium, or a certain method, or weak area, etc. but at this exact moment, what I really want to make sure I focus on, is doing something every day. I think it was that sort of flexibility that helped me get through 365 drawings this last year: whether it was a small mixed media painting, or an almost completely digitally created illustration, or pen and pencil wordless comics, or a tiny doodle the size of a postage stamp, or a piece of a larger project, or a drawing on a piece of tea-bag wrapper, or even an experiment in using stuff from my surroundings... I was at least doing something artistically. (Here is the whole set of 365 drawings for 2010.)

I'd like to keep that kind of momentum.

I am excited to see what I can do and where I will go with my art-making over the course of these next 365 days.

Meanwhile, that page that has those 15 little doodles on scrap paper... I am enjoying filling in and around and under with even more doodling and drawing (mildly nsfw). I am really liking how these pages are turning out.
#amdrawing

on this, the 276th day of 2010 (a #draw365 post)

I just drew no.237 of my draw365 project.

As you may have noticed, I'm behind by 39 drawings. But here's the thing, as this year has progressed, I have been picking up work as an artist. It started with getting a slot in a comic edition of Sunstone, from there it was a chance to do some illustrating for Rigor Amortis, which segued nicely to doing some illustrations for Cthulhurotica, cover art for Little Death of Crossed Genres and working on a graphic novel with a friend. Plus a few more things coming up on the horizon.

So while I am behind on the official "draw365" projects, I have actually been putting out hundreds of drawings/sketches/studies lately that haven't lent themselves to uploading and sharing as such....

I had an epiphany late Friday night as I was drawing like a madwoman, rushing towards a midnight deadline: what I was doing right then, that evening in my studio, I would not have been capable of 276 days ago.

(Here's the post I wrote when I was only about 30 days in, and then later at 65 days.)

Draw365 has been a pretty formative little project for me.
Now, I AM still planning on getting 365 drawings uploaded as such. On principle. Meanwhile, I"m going back to my sketchbooks to keep working on early Mormon apostates, Japanese bathhouses, shinto temples, Ninja Monkeys, tentacles, zombies, etc...

#amdrawing!

#draw365 (now 65 days in)

I am now 65 days into my #draw365 experiment.

A couple of items of interest:

~I discovered a vibrant and active community of other #draw365-ers on Twitter and that creative interchange has been extraordinarily stimulating.

~Right around day 52 I really started to feel like I was making some break throughs in my method and process.

~The past couple of days, I have spent quite a bit of time polishing and cleaning up and editing the 'sketches' (digital illustrations, really.)

~I miss charcoal and paint and fast sketching. I mean, I am really liking the drawings I am doing right now, but when I look at some of the pieces being produced by other #draw365-ers, it makes me want to pull back a bit from photoshop, and take a detour back into some hands-getting-messy materials.

~I think I need to set a time limit. A friend recommended this and it really resonated. One obvious plug for a time limit is that I'm busy with lots of other things on my plate... but that's not the real reason. I am remembering exercises we did in an illustration class where we had 30 min to quick-draw out some concept and discovering that I did really good work when I couldn't afford to over-work/over-think it.

So there you go.
I have another 300 drawings to go.
We'll see where this takes us.

365 sketches

If nothing else, I am hoping to accomplish at least that this year. A drawing a day. A sketch rather, usually done quite quickly, then scanned in and clean up in Ps. I've been doing them at the end of the day and while I usually have an idea what the sketch will be, I find that most times it takes on it's own life and mind as I move the pen across the page.

I'm also finding that I do not have that knack for knowing when to stop: I frequently over-work the sketch.

Also, I am discovering a tendency for disturbing imagery to emerge. I have a sketch for every day, but several of them I have on private simply because they are fairly graphic. (I blame it on that whole "mind of it's own" thing. It's not me. Really.)

There's a lot of other goals I have for this year as well (things like brushing up on my digital art skills, getting some computer programing knowledge, launching my web-comic, doing a painting a week, doing more with my etsy account, etc.) But we're already a month into 2010 and so far, I'm doing good to just put out a sketch a day.
(Interesting note: it was only last spring that I started drawing again. I had been on artistic sabbatical for quite a while before that. So, at least it's something.)