A New Goal: A Drawing A Day

On the NaNoWriMo forums, I discovered something called Project 365, in which you take (and preferably post online) a photograph a day. Digital cameras make it easy. And so I set up a Flickr account and a photo blog just for this. (My blog entry on this is here.) Which got me thinking: shouldn't I do something similar with my drawing? If something like Project 365 can make you a better photographer, then posting a drawing a day (drawn and scanned that day, of course) can make me a better artist.

Now, here's my problem: I've been procrastinating my drawing, even more than I've procrastinated my writing. I've drawn hardly anything since I started writing my novel Bad Company for NaNoWriMo '07, and all of it was last month. None of it was character-related, either; it was all practice sketches just to get me back into practice so that I can draw my characters.

But I've been faithfully posting a photo a day. But then, taking a picture with a digital camera is just a matter of aiming, shooting, and deciding if you want to keep the picture. Drawing is harder, especially if you don't have a drawing tablet: you have to draw, and scan, and edit. That takes time and effort, though not as much as developing a photograph from a negative (though if you ink and/or color the picture you draw, it gets close). A drawing tablet is, of course, something on my acquisition list. But until I get one, I'll have to use a pencil and/or pen, my scanner, and at least one of my many image editing programs. However, posting a drawing a day, or at least each entry, will be the perfect excuse for me to get drawing again, just as Flickr, Photoblog, and Picasa Web Albums gave me the excuse to start using my camera again (besides, I'm supposed to come from a family of shutterbugs, after all...). And, looking over the entries over the next year or so, my improvement will become obvious.

Once I start drawing, and once I get around to drawing my characters, I'll post the best drawing out of the bunch here, at the end of every entry. Once I get back into practice, I'll resume my preparation for drawing my future online comic, Spanner.

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