Tips for a Daily-Drawing Habit

 

12/29/24 Green Lake neighborhood

A friend and I were talking about new year’s resolutions, and she said one of hers is the same as it always is: Draw daily. She has been disappointed, though, that she hasn’t been successful in keeping it. Work and other time demands plus fatigue at the end of the day make it difficult for her.

I’m going on my fourteenth year of daily drawing, and it stopped being a “resolution” for me many years ago; it’s now just a “lifestyle,” I suppose. I don’t even think about it or stress about it because I wake every day knowing that I will draw sometime before I go to bed that night.

I gave my friend a few ideas and suggestions, and I thought I would put them (and more) in this post for others who might be trying to develop a daily-drawing habit, too:

1. I keep my standards low – both in terms of subject matter and quality of results. As all my blog readers must know after following me for even a short time, I’m the queen of sketching “nothing” – subjects with nothing particular interesting about them. But everything becomes interesting to me when I observe them long enough to sketch them. As for quality of results, when I open a sketchbook, I never set out to “make art.” Every page is just practice. (The exception is when I make a drawing on commission; that’s definitely not practice; that’s the result of all the practice behind it.)

2. I take one photo a day that might be something to draw. You all know what a strong proponent I am about drawing from life. That’s always my preferred way to draw and always what I recommend to others if they want to improve their drawing skills. But on busy days when I am starting to wonder whether I will have an opportunity to draw from life, I snap a photo of something as I’m going about my day (See tip above: Keep standards low).

Here’s an example at right: Just blocks from home, I spotted this bald eagle being harassed by crows. I didn’t have time to sketch it live, as much as I wanted to, but snapping the photo at the moment made it easy to sketch it in my journal that evening (below).

At the end of the day when I’m probably tired, it’s much easier to sketch from that photo than to draw from my imagination or look around the house for something to draw or – worst of all – scroll through thousands of reference photos on my phone or the Internet. Just draw from one photo you took today (or recently). The objective is not to find an “inspiring” reference (which could take hours); the objective is to draw.

3. I’m opportunistic. Sketchwaiting is an obvious opportunity, and we all have plenty of them – standing in a line, waiting for a takeout order, waiting for someone who is late.

10/3/24 A sketch in a restaurant while waiting for a friend.

I also keep a constant mindset that an opportunity could happen. The sketch at the top of this post is a good example. The continual, hard rain had turned to sprinkling, so I set out for a walk. I told myself that if the rain stopped, I would sketch whatever was right there. The rain stopped, and those trees and car near Green Lake were what I saw. (Keep standards low, remember?)

4. How about draped fabric? OK, I admit, that’s probably not for everyone. But I learned serendipitously during Pencilvember that hanging a scarf from a door knob can be a beautiful drawing subject as well as an excellent tonal study. The big bonus is that it is an instant still life with no setup fuss at all. (Once again, see Tip No. 1: Keep standards low.)

It’s important to note that the kind of daily practice I’m talking about here is an ongoing stretching and flexing to stay limber so that I’ll always be ready to draw without it becoming a big deal. It’s not necessarily about skills development. If someone who has never drawn before begins drawing daily, they will certainly show steady progress over time. But eventually everyone plateaus in skills development unless more deliberate practice is done (perhaps guided by a book or instructor). That’s about identifying and committing to a specific goal, taking the necessary steps to develop skills, and learning to observe and critique one’s own development (an example of that would be the memory drawing I tried to develop during my 100 Day Project a couple of years ago).

That’s all I have for now (I’ll share more as I think of ideas). How about you? Please share in the comments any ideas for developing a daily-drawing habit that work for you.