Today is 28th of Feb and I’ve just done the drawing for the day. So for the first two months, I’ve tracked what I’ve done (offline at the time of writing this as I’ve yet to upload the drawings) and some stats.
So for Jan, I drew on 14 days out of 31; February I drew 19 days out of 28. So that is an improvement and if you combine the two months, that is over 50%. Not quite the 70-80 % that I am aiming for but still not bad.
Some more stats:
| Data Point | January | February |
| Total days on v off | 14 v 17 of 31 | 19 v 9 of 28 |
| Total mins drawing | 181 | 416 |
| Total number of drawings | 17 | 14 |
| Average drawing time | 10.7 min | 29.7 |
| Average session time | 12.9 min | 21.9 |
| Longest session | 30 min (once) | 45 min (once) |
| Shortest session | 5 min (twice) | 5 min (once) |
| Longest single drawing time | 45 min | 50 mins (over 2 days) |
| Longest sequence of days drawing | 5 days (twice) | 6 days (once) |
| Longest gap between drawing days | 5 days (twice) | 2 days (once) |
| Shortest gap between drawing days | 1 (once) | 1 day (7 times) |
Almost all the metrics show there has been an improvement from one month to the next. The number of drawings went down because I spent more time on each of the faces meaning that the average drawing and session time went up: all important for the targets of patience and stamina.
The other big improvement is that the number of days between drawings. Obviously Jan was rubbish but I focussed more on making sure I never missed more than one day and only screwed up at the end of February, the weekend just gone (see below). However, looking at the days that I did miss, the weekend is the worst time because of my routine. In fact over the 9 weekends covering the two months, I drew on Sat 4 times, and Sun 3 times. This weekend just gone, also I spent a lot of time working on this website and got lost in that. Equally, there are plenty of places for improvement next month. So much so that I dont think I feel as if I have met the first target, not yet.
The biggest challenge over the two months has been remembering to draw when the habitual slot was missed. I tended to draw at the end of a working day but before dinner. But if I was really busy from work (like a telephone call or finishing a big piece of work) and that slipped, I would have dinner and then I struggled to do anything after dinner. A second slot is the answer to act as a buffer with the morning being the most obvious time. I tried it once already but that was all because my normal habit is to begin the day’s work. I will see how I can improve that.
Other reflections:
- Having a set of readily available reference images is super helpful in just getting on with it
- Faces are hard, really hard but making them larger does help a bit
- Shading and values are hard but super important: I found myself being hesitant in going for it but when I shaded and then layered the darker shades, it got better
- I can see why so many artists don’t like using white-white paper (like I am): it makes it harder to get some values especially the lighter values
- I can also see why some paper is better than others: I am just using up an old notebook which I don’t think is meant for sketching and am noticing some issues with pencil and the marks it leaves especially when shading
- Hard and soft pencils are super important
For the next targets of stamina and patience, I will leave that until after March as March is often a busy month work-wise. It would be sensible to keep it simple and don’t overload myself. I was hoping to begin the first target for the digital drawing path but I think that may have to wait until April as well. I may have time to plan it though.
Onwards to March 2022!