Every Day Sketchbook Challenge
Posted on August 18, 2024 by Aywren
One of the challenges I’ve taken up this year is a practice in returning to traditional art media. Along with hand-writing journals, I wanted to focus on paper-drawing my art again, rather than using a digital tablet all the time.
I broke out a very old sketchbook that I’d hardly used in the past, decorated the cover, and set a goal to work on a bit of a sketch a day, when possible.
I took some inspiration from various artists on YouTube who discuss keeping a sketchbook like this, and trying to practice a little each day. One artist that I admire discussed the practice of sketching anything and everything just to expand your skills and horizons.
But how do you find anything and everything to draw at random? My approach has been to use Pinterest.
I’m not usually a Pinterest user, but I do have an account. There’s a lot of variety to pull from there, that you can save into your own boards and reference again later – everything from horses to hair study!
As a result, my sketchbook contains a variety of content.
I do some sketches from video games, of course – like this Cadu study.
And marker practice with horses and birds.
Of course, there’s some practice-practice, such as drawing different types of eye shapes…
…And inking folds of cloth.
Most of these pieces I do over several days of progression, as I try to keep my sketch sessions short to fit into my day. So, one day, I might pencil in something quickly. I’ll later be inspired to come back to it and ink it. Then, if I like how it turned out, I’ll return to color it with markers.
Here’s a rough sketch of a fox I did that I want to come back to ink and color one day.
All of the art within this book is done with the mindset that I’m practicing re-discovering skills with traditional media that I haven’t used in a very long time (since I moved to mostly digital art on a tablet). So, I’m very forgiving and free-form with this. Nothing here is meant to be a masterpiece, and that gives me the freedom to explore and just have fun with it.
I do hope to write another post about the type of media I use most often, but for now, this was a quick look at my daily sketchbook!