Welcome to the third weekly roundup of my daily drawing challenge!
You can catch up with Week 1 and Week 2, if you missed them. And you can also follow the challenge along on my Instagram.
As I write this it’s nearly time for the fourth and final week, but I’m not ready to let this challenge go. I’ve tired myself out more than expected in this past week and have feelt the need to rest more over the weekend — not to mention lower energy levels due to my period — but I’m definitely excited to continue the daily drawing habit on the weekdays beyond the 30 days.
It may seem silly for an illustrator to have to challenge herself to draw every day — shouldn’t that be a natural part of my daily routine? If you’re new to these roundups, my motivation for the challenge was a recent disconnect from my creativity and creative practice due to burnout. The challenge has been a beautiful way to re-introduce play and experimentation into my life, when I had gotten paralysed by procrastination and perfectionism during 2022.
Time/Place is a state of mind
The Greeks have another concept of time alongside Chronos, or linear time. Kairos is the qualitative sort of time, the elastic and subjective passing of time depending on what we are doing and how we are feeling.
The third week of my drawing challenge has felt a little bit more rushed and crammed than usual. I had so many meetings, some of them to learn more about how I can uplevel my financial life, all of which require a lot of new neural pathways (or brainpower) to process. I’ve also spent a lot of time alone in my studio, which usually impacts my focus, however much I try to add productivity or focus hacks to my routine.
So there have been days when I’ve had very little time but produced exciting new experiments and discoveries, and other days where things have been more relaxed and yet more unfocused. Behold the squiggly brain, and the classic motivation by novelty and stress, at work.
E·motion
Continuing to develop lettering pieces exploring words and phrases has felt natural and exciting. My new favourite thing within this is depicting new positive affirmations that have helped my subconscious limiting beliefs in the past, but also good ol’ song lyrics.
The power of words for our minds is undeniable. I want to learn more about animating these letterings next.
Beauty in the mundane
There is something very satisfying and beautiful in drawing simple everyday scenes or objects. Sometimes I keep them as still life pieces, sometimes I am further developing them into more visually dynamic compositions, like the Spring Equinox animation above.
Cuff it
I’m continually adding to the challenge playlist, and obviously will make a cover for it next.
That’s it for this week, folks – see you next time!