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sketch a day
Nov. 18th, 2022 10:52 pmI've decided to embark on a sketch a day project. I was walking through a stationery store the other day and totally lusted after a beautiful Sketch A Day journal. It had a beautiful green/blue/grey cover, bound like a nice journal, just gorgeous. I went round the store and returned a few times to leaf through it, before finally coming to my senses and realizing that I had an empty notebook.
I'm pretty good with do X a day things, maybe because as a child I had a bunch of them - practice piano every day, journal every day, etc. I am bad about preparing for a deadline and all the January 1st starting plans, or Inktober, or Nanowrimo always sneak up on me and I abruptly realize on the eve of the event that I should have prepared. No, it's easier for me to simply decide to do it starting now. I feel like it should be possible to stretch things out so you do them weekly or every 3 days, but I simply can't keep the push to do the thing if it's on a slightly longer timescale - I just forget and procrastinate. I also procrastinate on the dailies, but it's a much tighter constraint so it's not nearly so bad.
A few years ago I started a carve a stamp a day project, which I meant to do for 30 days, but lasted about 15, and it really was a success. I fell off because I realized that the daily constraint was making me carve smaller and simpler stamps, and I wanted to stop doing that specifically, and there's just not enough time in a daily challenge to spend the time designing/carving. But I could really feel my skills levelling up hugely, even in that short time.
So! My current project is to try to improve my drawing skills. I have good motor control and I like a lot of adjacent things, but I have never put the effort into improving my drawing eye or my skills, and I'm so sick of being bad at drawing. We'll see how long I can go, but I'm going to go easy on myself. This notebook is small (A5) and the pages are pre-ruled in half (I did not buy this notebook for this purpose - I broke down after browsing 5,000,000 cute and beautiful stationery supplies in Kinokuniya and bought it). The extra lines on the page will hopefully decrease the scariness of the blank page. And I am putting zero constraints on the complexity of the sketch. It can be as simple or complicated, so on days I have nothing to do I can spend more time, but if I'm busy or don't feel like it, I'm going to just try to dash off a careless one, and it's going to count.
I'm pretty good with do X a day things, maybe because as a child I had a bunch of them - practice piano every day, journal every day, etc. I am bad about preparing for a deadline and all the January 1st starting plans, or Inktober, or Nanowrimo always sneak up on me and I abruptly realize on the eve of the event that I should have prepared. No, it's easier for me to simply decide to do it starting now. I feel like it should be possible to stretch things out so you do them weekly or every 3 days, but I simply can't keep the push to do the thing if it's on a slightly longer timescale - I just forget and procrastinate. I also procrastinate on the dailies, but it's a much tighter constraint so it's not nearly so bad.
A few years ago I started a carve a stamp a day project, which I meant to do for 30 days, but lasted about 15, and it really was a success. I fell off because I realized that the daily constraint was making me carve smaller and simpler stamps, and I wanted to stop doing that specifically, and there's just not enough time in a daily challenge to spend the time designing/carving. But I could really feel my skills levelling up hugely, even in that short time.
So! My current project is to try to improve my drawing skills. I have good motor control and I like a lot of adjacent things, but I have never put the effort into improving my drawing eye or my skills, and I'm so sick of being bad at drawing. We'll see how long I can go, but I'm going to go easy on myself. This notebook is small (A5) and the pages are pre-ruled in half (I did not buy this notebook for this purpose - I broke down after browsing 5,000,000 cute and beautiful stationery supplies in Kinokuniya and bought it). The extra lines on the page will hopefully decrease the scariness of the blank page. And I am putting zero constraints on the complexity of the sketch. It can be as simple or complicated, so on days I have nothing to do I can spend more time, but if I'm busy or don't feel like it, I'm going to just try to dash off a careless one, and it's going to count.
