January resolutions and the first pancake
I feel like January is the “first pancake” of the New Year’s resolutions timeline. It’s always a disaster. You should know going in that it’s going to be a disaster. But you have to get it out of the way so you can get to the good second pancake. So you make your messed up disaster pancake, feed it to the dog, and move on to the next one. Or you don’t get pancakes. And who wants to live in a world without pancakes? Not me, thats for sure!
So. New Year’s resolutions…
A year is a really crazy long time and I have a hard time picturing the future, so this year I decided to take it month by month. My resolution is really about short-term planning and follow-through in a few key areas rather than doing a specific thing 365 times. My resolution is to make three goals to do at the beginning of each month and do them daily, and repeat the next month. If they’re the same goals several months on a row, that’s fine! It’s about habit building. I’m focusing on small, attainable goals that will build up to the larger goal.
My January goals were:
Draw a bunny each day. A small, quick pencil sketch in a small notebook. Not even a sketchbook, a dot-grid Field Notes notebook. This was to be a super casual sketching exercise!
Close all my Apple Watch rings every day.
Add four easy things to my morning routine.
So how’d I do? This blog is about art mostly, so I’ll just quickly summarize goals 2 and 3: Fail and faaaaaiiiiilllllllllllll. I closed my rings seven times over the course of the month. I did 2/4 morning things 4 times and 1/4 morning things 4 times, and then stopped altogether on January 9. For February I’ll keep working on closing my rings, and I’m going to change the morning goal to something less ambitious.
But we’re not here to talk about my failures at getting healthy. This blog is about art, we’re here for the bunnies! I drew 11 bunnies this month (plus one watercolor and one digital, but that wasn’t the goal). Some I sketched from reference photos, some were cartoony and without reference. I’m pretty happy with all of them!
And did I mention I did one watercolor bunny? Here it is!
This tiny little guy is part of a test page I painted yesterday with some new products I got recently. A full product review is coming soon!
I learned a few things from the bunny drawing exercise. I think I got a little better on shading and perspective and realism and whatnot - basic drawing skills - but primarily I learned that if my daily goal is to do art, and my other daily goal is to draw a small quick bunny, my brain will absolutely mush those two goals up and stop after the bunny. I thought the bunny would serve as a warmup for more daily art, but it almost never did. I drew the bunny and my brain said “Congrats on doing art today! Now let’s binge The X-Files!”. So, yeah, not a great result.
I also learned that I draw better and take better photos when I’m at my desk. The couch screws up my posture and has bad lighting. Plus the couch puts me in tv-watching mode, so I’m more likely to call my art-day done when I’m working on the couch. My desk puts me in a work mindset and work position, which gives me better results all around. An important lesson!
For February I’ll continue drawing daily bunnies and attempting to close my rings, plus a third thing I haven’t figured out yet.
Wish me luck on my second pancake!
