NaNoDrawMo Complete: 72 Sketches

11/30/13 Diamine Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen, Canson XL 140 lb. paper

Today is Nov. 30, the last day of NaNoDrawMo. For those not yet familiar with it, the goal of NaNoDrawMo (patterned after National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo) participants is to make 50 drawings during the 30 days of November. How did I do? I hit 50 sketches on Nov. 19, and today I made my 72^nd sketch (this very leafless tree at Green Lake). I’m going to call it good!

Visiting the NaNoDrawMo Flickr group to post my daily sketches introduced me to the work of some people that I would otherwise not have seen. I tend to spend most of my online time looking at urban sketches, so it broadened my view to see more life drawings, comics and “object portraits” (as Kate calls them) than I usually do. NaNoDrawMo “forced” me to sketch subject matter that I had previously deemed boring – an activity that I discovered I enjoy. It also “forced” me to try to sketch every day, which has been a goal for me all along. There were still seven days in November that I didn’t sketch at all; it’s a goal, but I don’t beat myself up and quit if I don’t make it. After all, the most important thing about NaNoDrawMo is not the 30 days in November; it’s to keep going, drawing day after day, long after Nov. 30.

But I already knew that.

(Technical note: Now that most of the deciduous trees around here are leafless, I'm looking forward to sketching their fully visible shapes. I particularly like using my Sailor fountain pen to render bare trees. Although I have yet to master it, I like the way the pen makes thick and thin lines in a single stroke the way tree limbs taper.)