Affirmations: Week 43 2023 - Stillness

Affirmation for Week 43 2023: Stillness - I take moments to be still. (SoulSistersToo - Soulfilled)

Intention Setting: Help me feel no guilt when I take time moments to be still or when I choose to do nothing.

Cats in Bed - Drawing Lab

One of the new books that I bought recently was Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists by Carla Sonheim.

The first activity was to sketch lots of cats while in bed. I chose a few of my favourites and added water colour, pencil and ink to the illustrations. To see each cat illustration go to my Art Gallery.

My Practice Inspired by the Sketchbook Revival

Frenetic
Fun
Fabulous
Freeing

These four words are what I would use to describe my experience of the 2018 Sketchbook Revival: An Online Workshop created by Karen Abend.

It was quite a task to complete the 24 workshops that ran for two official weeks - with a 2 week catch up period. Each day there were two sessions to learn new techniques and mediums from a range of artist's that work towards sketching daily. Each session's video length was around one hour, so on top of the viewing time I spent extra time stopping and starting the videos, following the process to create my own sketchbook pages.
See my sketchbook revival creations later in this post.

Reflection On Workshop

It is now a few weeks since I finished the workshops and I'm really pleased that I took the time to immerse myself in developing my craft's; skills and techniques. Many of the workshops aligned with other creative practices that I am currently following ie: The Artist's Way by Julian Cameron and the Jen Storer's, Scribbles online creative writing course.

Ideas Jar - Loving the Salamander!

Wow what a change a few days can make.

When I first found out that I was going to have to draw a salamander I totally recoiled. I have now sketched a salamander for the last 4 days and I'm loving this little guy or gal.

Since the terrible first sketch I have drawn my salamander  7 times. Here is a sneak peek at some of the sketches.

Sketching Ideas Jars - Why a salamander?

One of  my goals for 2018 was to draw every day. I haven't yet been successful with this daily practice. So this week I joined a new group, Sketchbook Revival Online Workshop, it will begin in late April. I hope by doing this workshop that it will help me with my daily drawing.

How did I find this group?
Nina Rycroft highlighted this workshop at the end of her blog How to use your sketchbook practice to find your illustration style. In Nina's blog I read about Idea Jars. Idea Jars are filled with words to help inspire you to draw. I now have 3 jars labelled; animal, objects and actions, and in these jars I have 380 words.

I bought a new sketchbook for the workshop and decided that I needed to conquer my fear of how bad or good my drawings are in this book. It's about practice, ideas and opening yourself to creativity. 'But I don't want to ruin my new book!' I heard my inner child say to that horrible inner critic. I reminded myself that if I can do what ever I want in my Intuitive Art Journal (Sylvia Marris) no judgements, then I can do the same to my drawing sketchbook! Today I drew out the word the animal - Salamander.
My inner conversation went like this.