Tuesday, September 1, 2020 The Daily Sketch

I read a book a few years ago by a man who decided he wanted to get better at sketching so he did a simple sketch every day from his ordinary life. It was interesting seeing how he progressed and improved in this as he practiced consistently. He was never going to be an excellent artist, but that wasn’t his goal.

This has been a theme of mine on this blog: consistent and regular practice brings greater skill and confidence to the undertaking. Also, there’s a value inherent in the act of persevering, even if the level of skill reached is only mediocre. In fact, this is why I’m still writing a blog post every day, Monday through Friday. It’s the one daily undertaking of 2020 that I’ve been able to keep up with, the daily walks and photographs having fallen slightly by the wayside.

I’m somewhat intrigued with the idea of doing a daily sketch. I tossed off a quick one last night to insert into a letter to a young friend.

The more I think about the idea of doing this while being released from the expectation of “great art,” is really appealing.

Back when I was working on drawing animals I did a few quick sketches for fun.

These were admittedly a little more involved than the one of my feet above because I had actually taken the time to learn how to draw each of these animals with a lot of detail and from different photos just so I could learn the basics before doing the sketches of them. I discovered that there was a certain amount of muscle memory that developed with repetition.

I might give the daily sketch a try for awhile and see what comes of it. Notice that I’m not promising anything.

What would you like to learn how to do that might lend itself to daily practice? Piano? Memory work? Refinishing furniture? Gardening? Writing? I really want to know! Maybe we can encourage one another along the way.

I’ll probably sketch my deletion of this post in the morning.