Good morning guys! So I just finished day-10 of my daily drawing challenge for
this month. One thing that I have found so far that helps for me at least is
getting this done as early as possible in my day which ties in really well with
a new habit I'm trying to form or rather a habit that I'm trying to get rid of or
replace which is actually working really well for me because I am currently
working on changing my morning routine and changing my relationship with social
media; so replacing the habit that I have of grabbing my phone as soon as I wake
up, grabbing my laptop and replacing that with a new habit of having a quick
drawing session and then 10 to 30 minutes of exercise, having a shower and
then getting on with my day from there. Spending my morning screen-free has
opened up so much creative time for me, so it often starts in bed with my
sketchbook and then if I get really deep into it as I did with this one, I'll move
over to my desk where I have things; my pens and my paints, and just take it from
there. Another thing- we're getting a bit off topic now- another thing that is
helping me break the habit of just mindless scrolling on social media
throughout the day is that whenever I catch myself on my phone for no real
reason I will switch straight away to my duolingo app where I am practicing on
just refreshing my Spanish at the moment and I think I currently have a 32 day
streak going on there. But as for the daily drawing challenge, I have so far just
missed one day; I spent a couple of days out of town this week because we got the
sad news at the end of January that a family member had passed away so we
headed up to Manchester for the funeral this week and I did manage to squeeze in
some drawing time on the first night we were there while we were in the
Travelodge, my mum was watching the news, but understandably the next day I really
didn't have drawing high on my priorities. So I'm gonna give myself a
pass on that one. I don't think that missed day, missing that day in
particular, was anything to get too hung up on. And I'm back home now and I'm back
drawing. So drawing when I'm away from home is something that I do really
struggle with and I'm gonna have to work on this month even just this
weekend I'm gonna be staying at Ozzy's so it's gonna be a good time to test that
out but one thing that I also am getting the hang of with this challenge
so far is coming up with things to draw. So usually I will look back on my
previous day and see if anything stands out that I can draw inspiration from
for a drawing; so for example, if I watched a film the day before or just
telly or Netflix, could I draw one of the characters, could I draw one of the sets.
Last week Ozzy and I were talking about where we might want to go on holiday
this year and so for the next few days I was drawing and painting different
locations that we had talked about. Anything I can pick up on really from my
day or from my week, I will see if there's anything from that pool of
memories that I can draw inspiration from for a quick drawing. Now yesterday,
looking back on the week that I've had, I really couldn't think of anything that I
wanted to draw. The last few days were obviously quite difficult ones and so
there's nothing that I particularly wanted to draw from that so what I did
was my next backup thing which is to draw from photos. So I have a huge
Pinterest board full of things I could draw but what I did yesterday was I went
and grabbed an anatomy book that I have over here somewhere and I just drew
some hands and studies from that, and as I was drawing- as usually happens when
you start to spark that creativity- I actually did remember something from
that week that I could draw and that was that I met my great uncle Phillip for
the first time while I was in Manchester, so that was a cool thing that I thought
I might record as a memory. So I just pocketed that idea while I finished off
the anatomy studies that I was doing and I've used that idea today for my drawing
practice so I didn't even have to think about it. And as I was setting up my
camera to start recording this, I actually did smudge it a little bit
which is kind of annoying but I'm glad I have got my drawing practice out the way
for today because it's gonna be a relatively busy day. I have my first ever
livestream today on patreon and I'm nervous because it's completely unknown
but I'm really excited to get started with it and I'm excited to get this
first one out of the way so that I know what I need to do for next time, if anything
goes wrong I'll know how to improve on it for next time.
But super exciting! I need to get a lot of stuff done before that so I've got a
video that- well I've got painting that I want to do that I might potentially film
and then if I have time, I might film another video then I also need to get
all my stuff together for the weekend I'm spending Ozzy's, make sure I'm packed
and ready to go and have everything sorted before the stream starts tonight.
So I'm going to stop talking about it and get on with it!
Right so it's starting to get dark and I'm getting a bit anxious about the
streaming later so I thought I would relax myself by making sure I have
everything sorted out. So I'm right now packing my bag for the weekend and I
thought I would show you the stuff I'm going to take with me to be able to be
drawing on the go, so of course I have my sketchbook this is where I'm doing my
drawings at the moment, I am just gonna keep it really simple with my drawing
tools and take a pencil- just a cheap bic mechanical pencil- bic biro here. I'm also
bringing a white pencil to do any highlights on that lovely toned paper
and just in case, I'm going to also bring my portable paint palette that you've
just seen; the watercolor palette that I can use on the go. And it's all going in
this nifty little pencil case. So that's it and that can just go really
comfortably in the front pocket off my rucksack and once I've put some clothes
in here I'll be all set to go for the weekend. Now I'm going to test my
streaming setup and leave it set for later on tonight and then I can crack on
with the rest of my few hours of daylight that I've got left without
having to worry about anything else.
Oh my god guys, what a week it has been! So last time we spoke, I was heading off
to Ozzy's and we were just gonna have a really chill a couple of days; he's been
working like double shifts back-to-back for about two weeks now so he was knackered
so we were just gonna veg out for a couple of days. Obviously doing nothing
is something I'm very good at so I was happy to do that. I did manage to get
some drawing in just chillin with Tooli in bed and that was great, that was a
good practice for gesture kind of drawings, cos obviously she's a
cat, she doesn't stop moving. And then the next day started like any other, we had a
lovely breakfast in bed, Ozzy made the best omelette I've ever had and we
were just gonna chill. And then we got a phone call from his mum who is a taxi
driver, black cab driver, and obviously working in London she does get to meet a
lot of really interesting people and on that particular day she happened to
meet one of kendrick lamar's crew, his music publisher was in the back of her
cab and they got talking and he so kindly gifted us with tickets to go and
see Kendrick that night at the o2 arena. I honestly didn't believe it, I thought
this is a really cruel scam by some horrible guy that's just pretending that
he knows Kendrick Lamar and he's gonna make us go all the way to the arena and
we're gonna get there and you know we'll find out that there were no tickets. We
got dressed that evening headed out, we went for dinner at Yalla Yalla, lovely
Lebanese food, the best shawarma oh my god and mojitos- so that alone I was
happy with, like if the evening ended there I would have been fine. Little
did I know just how good it was gonna get. So we went to the box office, got our
tickets, they came with these little VIP tokens
and we're trying to like keep our cool, you know like this is completely normal, we're
used to this. And yeah we ended up getting cutting the queue which was
great and in the arena itself we were down in like the main crowd in front of
the stage but in our own section, this like platform area suspended out of the
crowd with you know maybe like five other people in there. It was the best
vantage point, there was one point where he like popped up out of the middle of
the crowd and he was right there and I was freaking out! The whole thing, I kept
turning around and being like 'is this real? like am I dreaming? this cannot be real'
Monday night! My plan for Monday night was to watch a TV show about
expensive plane tickets or something and ended up having the most amazing concert
experience that I've ever had in my life. So I mean shout out to Ozzy's mum thank
you for that. Shoutout to Kendrick, the show was incredible.
So I'll be honest, with the daily drawing thing after that
I was still in like this whirlwind so I didn't draw on that day and the next
day so that's two days that I missed and what- I don't know- what I've been
learning along the way from this daily drawing challenge that I've set myself,
because I'm constantly bending the rules for myself, because for me a challenge is
about learning something along the way- like with inktober, I was learning how to
manage filming and uploading every day the consistency of that- with this I'm
learning how to fit drawing into my day where I normally wouldn't have. So I
don't normally draw when I'm not at home, so drawing while I was at Ozzy's even
though it was like another comfortable space, that was new for me. What I've
learnt from this last few days is that the priority for me is to make memories
and then you know second to that is making art. So I'm happy, like I'm not mad
at myself for missing days. Maybe people think that that would be a failure in
like a daily drawing challenge but for me, I've already drawn in situations
where I normally wouldn't have, I'm straight back into drawing now which is
another thing I've learned. Where it can be so easy to miss a day and then be
like 'oh well, okay that's a failure, I'm gonna pick up again next month, I'm gonna
try again next month' it's great to have pressure on yourself to do it but
at the same time just knowing that you can pick up again wherever you left off,
you know not to let a hiccup be the end is great. So I think there are four
things that I've learnt so far from this. Having things to draw like drawing from
experiences, drawing as early in my day as possible or having a time in my day
that's dedicated to drawing and getting it out of the way, picking up where ever
I left off; not letting a missed day be a major hiccup and living life first and
drawing later. So another thing that I've adjusted for myself is that the last
couple of days, the way I've been creative has been different to my usual
sketching or painting. I have been- if you remember in my last vlog- I bought some
paint samples while I was buying different colors for the bookshelves and
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them but I have some big a1 mountboards
and I just yesterday decided that I wanted to paint them. I thought they'd
make maybe good backdrops for Instagram photos, flat lays, stuff like that,
possibly as like tabletops for my videos (by I'm not sure how well that would work
out so yeah)
Okay so I just got the weirdest text, I don't know who that's from.
What was I saying?
Painting these mountboards, I was primarily doing it to use as something
but just the process of doing it was very enjoyable even though obviously it
doesn't seem like anything it was nice - the reason I want to work on bigger
pieces this year is I love the engagement that it has with your body, I
love the movement and flow of just bigger paint strokes and just that
physical feeling of painting rather than you know the just the hand movements of
working in a sketchbook, so that was a really enjoyable like 5-10 minutes. They
look gorgeous, they actually look so nice I kind of I feel like... it'd be very
pretentious to like hang them up but they do kind of look like a contemporary
art piece all together. Kind of giving me Rothko vibes. Anyway, I'm gonna put them
away, I'm not gonna hang them up but they are lovely lovely colours. And then also
in terms of what I've been doing in my sketchbook, the last couple of days have
been more journally, so I stuck in the little knickknacks from the Kendrick
concert and then the next day, today, this morning, my sketchbook page was just like
a journal page where I wrote about it a little bit just so that I could have
that memory there. So two quick and less artistic pages but for me that still
counts. I've said before- I might link the video in the cards- but
with art challenges, I think the best thing to do is do it in a way that's
gonna work for you. Do it in a way that's gonna benefit you and where you're gonna
come out of it having learned something and not just having drawn every day. So
I'm learning a lot from this. With the page I did today, I actually used this
pen, this amazing glass pen that I received as a gift in my PO Box. It was
sent from before Christmas I think, I only just received it and it's from
Anastacia from Russia and it was the most gorgeously packaged package I've
ever received, it's really like made me want to up my game with
packaging. She sent a really sweet letter and some of her own artwork, I'll leave a
link below to her instagram for you to check it out.
I love how in the letter she's like 'it's just a little present for you, nothing
special' uh yes! It's amazing! Thank you so much!
Really, really special so I really appreciate it thank you for that
Anastasia. Yeah the rest of the day it's gonna be a busy work one, but quite a
boring filming one. I'm doing a lot of like editing and emails and boring admin
stuff but I'm feeling good, sun's out and I look like a bean but life's good!
Also forgot to mention I am trying out red bubble at the moment as
an alternative to society6 so I thought I would order a couple of things
from their website just to check out the quality before I make that move and they
got delivered today, so quite quick delivery. Basically I saw that Helen
Anderson who was a vlogger, she has this amazing Bob Ross t-shirt I love and I
wish I knew where it was from I would love to find it but in the meantime, I decided
to get a Bob Ross sticker- it's very cool, I do like the quality of that- and I've
got a t-shirt as well that's like a pixel Bob Ross but I don't know if you
can see in this light, the colour of his hair and colour of the t-shirt, it
looked good on the photo on the website, but it's not exactly the same like his
hair just kind of blends in and I feel like, I don't know, I feel like it looks-
you can't tell as much that it's him. But I like it, I like the quality I do think
I will make that move over to red bubble. Oh and I will leave links below to the
artists that made these as well.
Hey guys, so I can't remember the last time when we spoke, I haven't been
filming a lot this month and it's been quite nice to be honest, to just be
living life and not worrying about the camera, but I thought I would come and
sign off. It's actually the first of March today, I'm at the moment just
cutting down some paper to use as postage labels, I just find it really
affordable to just get an a4 sheet of sticky back paper and cut it down to a6
size and use that as my postage labels. It's also just a nice kind of non
effort related work task to be doing, like no thought required but I'm getting
something done. So that is the start of my plan for work today.
My main priority today is actually to do a finished painting. So in this month of
drawing everyday, I spent a lot of time in my sketchbook and doing small pieces,
lots of studies and it was lots of fun, it's been great to commit that much time
to drawing, but I've realised that in this process,
I really missed the act of making finished pieces and building up a nice
solid body of work, so that is my goal for this month; I'm gonna try to do seven
new pieces of work -finished pieces of work- a week. So it may be one a day, it
may be a few in a day, I have a few different themes going and I'll talk
about that in the next vlog once I've started with it, but obviously today; 1st
of March. is the first day. I'm gonna see if I can get a painting in and that'll
be the patreon reward for this month as well (every month I do a exclusive print
for the patrons so I'm hoping to do a painting today that I'll make into
prints for them). So regarding the daily drawing thing, it went pretty well! There
were days where I didn't necessarily draw like you saw the day I did the big
just painting the boards. I also got into doing digital art for the first time
really doing it properly. I've used my iPad and tablet
here and there to like map out ideas really basically but, because I don't
have a lot of experience with digital art, I never have been able to really get
my ideas out there the way that I would want them to look. So Baylee in one of
her- Baylee Jae in one of her recent videos recommended a scarf- scarf?- a CLASS on
Skillshare that she found that was like procreate basics. I bought my iPad
specifically so that I could get the app procreate cos I'd heard so many people
talking about it and once I tried it, it was such a steep learning curve
especially because I don't know- I have such a twitchy eye!- I don't know anything about digital
art or using a tablet so I just ended up not using my iPad really- not for drawing
anyway. So Baylee recommended that class on Skillshare- this isn't sponsored by the
way- but yeah I took that class and it's helped so much for me to just be able to
get my ideas down in digital form. So I've done a lot a few like fun little
drawings there and those really helped out with my daily drawing thing
just so that I would have lots of different ways to do it. Like if it was
late at night and I was in bed and I didn't want to get my sketchbook out, I
knew I could just whip my iPad out and do a little sketch on there, so it made
it so much easier to have different things that I could do when it came to
drawing everyday and I guess that that would be my final tip; just have as many
options as possible for the days where you're not in the mood to draw, just be
as open with it as you can and fulfill that brief in the best way that you can
find in that time. So if it's doing a sketch on the back of a napkin
or doing a full-on massive painting or doing some digital doodles you know even
if it's just with your mouse and MS Paint, if you can do something,
just like the act of committing to it I think it's better than nothing.
but yeah. Did I manage to draw everyday? I don't think every single day
but more days than I've ever drawn in a row ever. Definitely more days out of a
month that I've ever spent drawing so for me this was a success. I thought
to show you a couple of things, maybe the most recent thing that I did. This
was from yesterday I think, maybe the day before, but it is just this painting to
go along with this one that you will have seen already in a video. I
did another one, I've got three more canvases this size so I'm gonna keep
doing a few more little landscapes like this. They're a lot of fun. This one I did
live on patreon and it was a good load of fun, we're going to do it all
together next time, like a paint along, so that'll be interesting. Let's see if
there's anything in here... I'm not sure if you'll be able to see any of this but
I've done like pages of life drawing studies as well and then the
only other thing really to talk about is a couple more things that I received in
the last few days through the post. So first off is this one, this is a letter that came
in a really cute, really lovely decorated envelope. This is from Lily in Illinois
and she just sent this really really cute little bundle of things, the
sweetest letter and what I love in this is that she also keeps like a visual
diary that I've been trying to do as well and she calls them happy books I
love that so I might start calling mine that from now on. And this little note
that says thank you for waking up in the morning and creating you got this. So
thank you for that Lilly, that is so kind of you. And then the last one, this is
from Faye from Ireland, and I have to admit, I did read this whole entire
letter in my head in an Irish accent and I would do it out loud but I'm so bad at
accents. I can do it really well in my head and then when it comes out of my mouth,
it sounds ridiculous. But thank you so much for this letter Faye!
It was really- really amazing handwriting!- it was really lovely to hear from you and
yeah, I'm always just so jealous of people's stationery, everyone has the
nicest like fanciest paper. And if any of you guys leave your like Instagram names
or anything on here I'll leave them all below in the description so people can
check out your work if your artists or you know just come and say hi. But yeah
overall thank you guys for joining me again this month, thank you for watching!
I hope that my tips for drawing everyday have been at least remotely useful, I
thought you know I could make a different kind of format of video for
this but I thought it'd be good to just try it and take you through it as it
actually happens, and you know realistically what is like
to try and draw everyday. I know that other people will probably be able to do
it better than me but for me, I always think of these challenges
as something for myself and if I can share at least one tip that's
useful for other people then that's all I would really want. For me it's been a
success and I'm looking forward to spending next month making some solid
pieces of art, really building up my collection and having more stuff in the
shop and just building up a good portfolio of work. I'm also next month
going to be sharing like how I make prints because I do keep getting asked
about that so yes, stay tuned for that. But for now that's it, thanks for
watching! Bye!
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