Drawing Challenge Day 1 - Ship

Ever had those days when nothing seems to go right?  And you started out the day with such high hopes and you just didn't perform?  Day 1/day-2-that-became-day-1 were those kinda day's for me.

I liked the sketch.  It had certain qualities - it had potential.  But I couldn't do it justice.  I ended up overworking everything and getting happy with the grey wash and lost sight of what I wanted to do with the piece.  It didn't have any of the energy, the direct, intentional, and confident expression that I was looking for.  Not a bad idea - just not well executed.

In the end I think I achieved some of the narrative aspects I wanted.  The piece works pretty well compositionally, though there are several tangents that should have been addressed.  But overall, for a piece that I spent about 10 hours on, it could be worse.

Could be better, too.

My thoughts at the close of the "first day", after finishing the first piece: It's hard to go to bed disappointed with yourself.  It's great to be excited and hopeful about learning a bit and training my brain to sit down and work on art everyday and looking forward to improving.  But really, this could turn out to be 29 more days of "wow, I forgot how difficult making good art is (i.e. wow, I think I'm really bad at this)".  What have I gotten myself into?

A Personal 30-Day Drawing Challenge

So after a very long (and unplanned) hiatus, it's time to get back into the groove and make some art.

This summer was rough - actually this whole year's been tough - and I have been questioning everything.  I have been trying to fix everything - especially myself - and have really not fixed anything.  Ambiguous?  Yes, I guess that is.

I have been trying to decide who I am.  I have been asking myself so many questions - What am I doing here?  Am I really an artist?  Do I even have the guts to do art?  What kind of artist do I want to be? And I do not have answers for any of these.

The point is, I need to stop planning to fix what hasn't broken yet and just do.  My goal is to move forward, to find joy in telling stories and making art.  Which may be easier said than done.  Is it weird to say that I'm a little nervous?

Now, I want to develop a black and white illustration method (I'm intentionally not using the word "style", by the way), and because I've been following Jared Muralt, Niroot Puttapipat, and Andrew Mar's ink drawings on Instagram for a while, and because it is Inktober, this challenge will be done in ink.

I have a 1-word prompt assigned to each day with 2 alternates in case of emergency (i.e. the inexplicable absence of a muse).

At the very least, I will be posting pictures of the work on Instagram and Facebook.  I'd like to post the final here everyday, but I don't know how feasible that is.  So, I will say that I will be posting the round up of the previous week's drawings here on the blog every Monday until the challenge is complete.

Parameters

One drawing per day
Medium: Ink
Colors: no more than 3
Size: no smaller than 7" x 8.5"

Goals

Through this challenge, my aim is to build confidence in myself and my capabilities while continuing to develop an creative process.  In each piece, I will be focusing on developing my visual storytelling abilities specifically through composition, contrast, detail and character development.

Start Date

Monday, October 26th

End Date

Tuesday, November 24th


My access to a computer and or Photoshop may be hit or miss for the next week, but again, you can follow the progress on Instagram or Facebook.  Final drawings will be for sale in the store.

I'm Upgrading

I've got a new website!

I've got a new shiny website: sarasilkwood.com where the portfolio will be.  This site will still be here and I'll be blogging, but all the "professional" stuff will be over there.  Let me know what you think!

Truth for today

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual.  Such are the moments of our greatest happiness.  Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.  If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign.  It was in this hope that the arts were invented.  Sign-posts on the way to what may be.  Sign-posts toward greater knowledge.

-Robert Henri

"The Final Catch" by Joy Ang

I just found this hilarious comic by artist Joy Ang.  Though, I should tell you that my brother Matthew thinks it's creepy.  You can "read" the comic here. 

Do you think it's creepy or funny?  Let me know!

Check out this Project on Kickstarter

I missed the first book (dang it!), but I'm very glad I found this one!  There's a link on the page so you can preview the entire book.

Here's the link to see the first book.

EDIT: You can pre-order the first book here for $44.95 plus shipping.

Individual vs. Corporate Art

Everyone's probably already seen this on Muddy Colors, but I thought the ideas in it were important enough that they could stand to be restated by me on this blog.

So whether you've seen this already or not, enjoy!