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So I can happily say some of those New Years Resolutions remain on track.  Actually I read a great blog post recently about not calling them Resolutions, because then it feels like way too big a deal when you fail.  I understand.  So I set best Intentions (yes with a capital I) for the year to create five sketches per week.  So far I’m falling a little behind, but with great reason.  The first week was easy.  The size of the sketches were also pretty small – I would guess about 4″ x 6″ largest.  I could do them quickly, and I’m still happily experimenting with techniques from my book from Christmas (which by the way I have also discovered I have a tendency to treat those sort of books as a security blanket.  I’m all over the map here, I know it.)

Back to the five sketch a week goal. Around week 3 I really began to relax into it, in a good way.  The three sketches I produced that week took longer – about 90 minutes to two hours each.  But I was really settling into the process – and loving it.  I used to be endlessly frustrated with figuring out the scale of my drawings, and how to make everything fit on the page, or where to add the detail and where to simplify.  Things were magically starting to just…work.  I could reference one angle or shape in a drawing and base the rest of the scale on that piece.  Amazing!  Still lots of room to grow, don’t worry.  Then something bad happened.  I got stuck one day – couldn’t match the expectation I’d created for myself after three solid drawings to round out the remaining quota for the week.  I was frozen.  Seven days went by and I avoided both pencil and pen.  Then (finally) the artistic itch set in, and with it, impatience.  I got over myself.  SO WHAT if I was still supposed to be sketching things from Brazil?  Take a break.  Draw something quick and simple.  Set a timer even.  I started a new board on Pinterest – called it Quick Fives.  This board is for five minute sketches.  Realistically, they’ll be a lot longer than this – but the concept is simple.  These sketches are just for the process.  To relax, to get the shape down quickly on paper and most importantly to have fun.

That’s the story of the bus above.  I changed up the process, did the initial sketch in about fifteen minutes (told you five isn’t realistic…yet?) and then tried laying on paint before ink to see if that would make my shades of red any better.  I’ll keep at this for a while.  It was suggested in one of the Urban Sketching blogs I’ve been following – but that’s a post for a later date 🙂