The Afterlife of the 50 days drawing project

The Afterlife of the 50 days drawing project

A more than a year passed since the end of 50 days drawing project. The project lasted for bit more than 3 months, from the January 12th to 27nd of March in 2015. Even though short as such that period of time was a true emotional roller coaster. Full of ups and downs. Getting frustrated a lot of times as my skills were so far away from where I wanted them to be. At times on other hand I got it right and did produce something I was happy with, hence occasional little triumphs.

And so the project ended I went back to the 'real' work, back to UX/Service design projects and more or less left my drawing to be for a while. Some time passed and I knew I had to write an ending. A 'lessons learned' part. Something all decent projects have and so does this one deserves one also!
So... drum rolls... Here it goes.

"It's your thing, do what you wanna do."

Ok, more like a mantra for the project. A reason behind all the fuss. The Isley Brothers were and still are on to something important. Life is short. Fill it with something you love. Do stuff.

"You find new things when you're lost."

Or so does Karl Pilkington. I had little plan before I started the project and pretty much jumped into drawing portraits. Why? I had a long list of things for the year long project which didn't worked out so for the shorter project I guessed the day-at-a-time approach would work better. So I did had no plan as such. A bit of uncertain feeling, but I gave it a go. Waking up in the morning, making some espresso and thinking about the drawing subject for that day. Slow mornings. I miss them. :)

It takes 10 000 hrs to get really good at something.

I believe this is correct. And by the end of the project I was not even close to 10 000 hours! The amount of time I spent on the project was ...  around 250-300 hours. Not that much! Yet the feedback - which by the way and for which I am truly grateful -  gave me the impression of progress especially towards the end of the project. Was there a progress? Looking back, I'd like to think I progressed at least a little. And even if the progress was very little, that still proves there is no other way than work hard to master something. No shortcuts to happiness.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

My experience in drawing was very basic at the beginning of the project. No fine art education background. But I drew from the very young age. That was just something I loved to do. In addition I did go to design school where I got degrees in industrial design. That even by this day still does help in e.g. thinking three-dimensionally alongside other things learned, but it does not give a set of tools and methodology the fine art education gives.

So without fine art education and basic drawing skills I started to draw portraits. Very frustrating most of a time, because of the high-kept bar, lots of poking around and learning by making mistakes. Having the blog was actually an extremely good way to get rid (at least partially) of the perfectionism burden. I promised myself to publish something every day I did something.  Regardless how good, ill-made, work-in-progress or unfinished that was. I still published that. What a catharctic experience.

I love youtube

It is very easy nowadays to get information on anything from the interwebs and especially the youtube. Also on drawing, techniques. From the myriad of artists. "The world is your oyster". I watched lots of videos whenever I had chance, and with that I can say that instead of single artist I was following the community.

Learning to see

Finally, the biggest revelation to me during the progress was that I started looking at the world slightly differently. Paying attention to specific details, light, shadow -  anything critical to the drawing I wanted to make. Making my hand on other hand draw what I see, is then another story. :) Still working on that.

Off to a new project!

Hopefully you were not exhausted by reading all of this. But hey, good news! In case you didn't know - we have a baby: new project! I guess you might have figured out that 50 days of drawing might continue on some level. So it does. After I realised I missed drawing too much yet didn't have the place or time to do that - that screamed for new challenge!  And what would have been more challenging than doing the thing for the whole year instead of 50.

So without further ado here is the new project called:
http://sketchaday365.tumblr.com/ 

It is focused mostly on digital drawing ( I have iPad pro now ! ) and hosted on tumblr. I'll uploded few images here to give you an idea what it is about. Stay tuned!