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!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Feb 1, 2011

    Bananas... since I don't have anything else to say about bananas, I decided to comment on my "desert island" list of sketching tools. Having been sketching so much lately, I've found the minimum and simplest things I need are a number two school house yellow pencil, a folded paper towel (because my hands are terrible smudgers and I have to have it under my hand), a clean eraser (the one I like best so far is a pentel "clic" eraser that works like a mechanical pencil to feed out a column of eraser), a big fat soft round paint brush (also because my hands are terrible smudgers... I simply cannot brush off eraser crumbs without creating a mess of my graphite)... and a sharpener. That's it. Five things, not counting the "dirty" eraser on the other end of the pencil which is sometimes good for deliberately smeary erasing. 
    Of course, I could skip the paper towel and brush, and even the eraser... but I need them to try to do "a good job". I also sometimes have been using a pencil or two out of a six pencil Staedtler HB to 8B set, but generally don't bother to break any of them out, so I could easily leave them behind without regret. 
    I haven't really got a good portable sharpener yet... I'd like a cordless electric one but am using a plug-in electric. Of course, on the desert island I'd probably need a little hand-twisted sharpener, but I'd also probably keep messing up for lack of a good point because I get drawing and admit I just won't break to sharpen if it takes too long... at least I know my foibles. 
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2 comments:

  1. Amy MannFebruary 6, 2011 at 5:57 PM

    My favorite sketching tool is a .5 mm mechanical pencil - you don't need a sharpener. And you can buy leads as soft as 4B! That, and a kneaded eraser, is all I need. But I have some really soft 8B and 9B that are nice for deep blacks. They're too soft for a sharpener, so I use a knife and a sandpaper tablet to sharpen them. Nice bananas, by the way!

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  2. EmFebruary 6, 2011 at 10:15 PM

    Rawls keeps urging me to try a mechanical pencil... I used to dislike them, but he says they are probably better than back in the dark ages. You must be able to hold you hand up off the page more steadily than I can - I smudge, so I love my paper towel and paint brush!

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