The purpose of a sketch a day is just to do it - sketch! It doesn't matter if it is an involved sketch or if it is a simple contour or gesture drawing. There are no rules except to sketch each day.

Life parameters can dictate the time investment, but a sketch a day commitment is designed to elevate the personal priority of sketching ... to enforce sketching. Making it into a "resolution" validates the activity (invests it with a bit of a challenge even!) and defends against competing demands. The sketch a day is designed for practice - to reinforce basic skills, and to provide daily contemplation on the issues of two dimensional representation.

Several of us are doing a sketch a day, and I would enjoy hearing from anyone else who decides to join in. We share our efforts, support each other, keep each other honest and... hopefully we'll have some fun doing this!

Click on any of the sketches to enlarge...
and don't forget to check out older posts!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Jan. 10, 2011

     This is a sketch of the corner of my living room, and a terrarium where a tiny baby Eastern Mud Turtle lives. Although the light looks like the lamp was on, the flat rectangular light on the terrarium was on, and not the lamp - it just threw those light arches on the wall. Also, the shade really was cocked so the top rim leans up against the flying bird finial, which didn't bother me at the time, but in the drawing does... There was a chameleon sitting on the rim of the shade to the left, knocking it all skee-wunky. The odd thing is I must have gotten distracted and wandered off before doing more than a line or two of the chameleon. I didn't realize I had neglected to finish drawing him in until I viewed the scanned photo...
    Several lessons here for me:  Take another look after I think I'm done (which doesn't mean I'll always take more time, but I'll Decide to take more time or not); use fixative if there's a lot of dark or worked areas; and it's okay to take a moment to set the area up a bit before the sketch. It's about the sketching, but it's legitimate to make it about the composition too.
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1 comment:

  1. Amy MannJanuary 25, 2011 at 12:25 PM

    Great sketch! On enlarging it, I really enjoyed seeing the difference in your lines where you just quickly indicated where something was (the couch on the right, the hanging picture above) and where you more carefully delineated (the glass corner of the terrarium.) The lighting is really believable.

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