I have always considered myself to be somewhat creative.  When I was growing up, I always had a sketchbook or modeling clay.  My mother would gather the reams of wasted office paper and bring them to me to make drawing pads.  And my love of office supplies is my fascination with anything that can make a mark.  Somehow, I let life get in my way.  I made the choices that would lead me to college, a career, a steady income and stability for my family.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I just wish that I had not given up what I loved to do it.  Why, for instance, didn’t I continue to draw, paint and sculpt as a hobby?  Was it the money, the time, or the perception that it was a waste of my effort?  I felt that I should be more focused on the things that would define me as a success.  After my parents retired from their upper management positions, I watched as they went from professional business attire to cutoff t-shirts and flip-flops.  I also watched as the people they considered friends went on with their busy lives and lost touch.  They are comfortable in their retirement, and successful.  But not the kind of success that they worked so hard for all the years I was growing up.  The social status, higher income, nice home and cars, that success vaporized almost instantly.  Better than that is that now they are happy.  They are satisfied with where their life is right now.  They are genuinely happy spending time with each other, their grandkids, and their parents.  My dad has lived every little boy’s dream in that he has been a soldier, mailman, farmer, carpenter,  mechanic, welder, banker, fireman, Ambulance Driver/EMT, and now a policeman.  Seriously, all he has left to do is get aboard one of the next Space Shuttles and he will have fulfilled every position on the actionfigure aisle in Wal*Mart.  My mother quilts, embroiders, reads, plays cards with my grandmother, and runs around doing all the school parenting things with the grandkids that she feels she missed out on with me.  Once again, they have defined success for me.

A few months ago, I picked up my pencils and a sketchbook and started sketching around.  Last year, I even tried to start a sketching class at a local art store.  But it took finding the Everyday Matters challenge to really fire me up.  The concept struck me immediately.  Everday items are important because they make up the imagery of your life.  Every Day Matters because of everyday matters.  So, 100 or so days ago I picked up a 3.5″ x 5″ strathmore sketchbook and a .5mm mechanical pencil and began drawing for just 10 minutes a day, following the EDM list of challenges.  Once I started drawing every day, I didn’t want to stop.  I became involved in projects like the Thing-a-day, and Virtual Sketch Date.  The improvements seen in skill from the first EDM, draw a shoe (shown above) and the 100th, draw a bar of soap(shown left), may be subtle, but they are exciting enough for me to crave more.  I have invited some of my lifelong friends and  some of my new online friends to compare and critique the first images with the last.  I will post those here as they come in.  I am really excited about what the NEXT 100 days will bring.

I thought there would be fireworks.  I actually was going to cover this page with fireworks celebrating the 100th EDM, draw a bar of soap.  I will now toot my own horn.   TOOT!  I am so proud of the progress that I have made since starting these challenges.  When you compare the first few with the last few (except for the Kansas landscape) the difference is just amazing.  I can’t wait to see what happens over the next 100 days.  For the next few days I will invite some guest critiques to compare and contrast the earlier and the last pieces.  I will also discuss the other projects that I became involved in and other ways that the EDM challenges have affected my life overall.

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EDM 100: Draw a bar of soap

Some people love landscapes.  They love to view them, paint them, study them…  I am not one of those people.  When I look at a landscape, I am looking at technique.  I look at color usage, composition, the people or lack thereof.  Last night’s EDM challenge, draw a landscape, was not something I would have considered on my own.  One of the largest benefits from these challenges, besides the encouragement to Art everyday, is the push to step outside what you would normally do.  I would never have thought to draw my cheeseburger in challenge 12, or the view from my bike in 55, or even the doorknob in 56.  It forces you to see things all around you as special and worth “arting.”

Lest you think my landscape is an unflattering view of Kansas, I would like to say that I actually ADDED curvature to the land for points of interest.  Kansas is flat, Baby.  It’s no wonder people think about flying off from Krypton or dropping houses out of the sky.  That wind is solid forever.  Lovely countryside.

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EDM 99: Draw a landscape

The EDM Challenges were originally set out as weekly sketches.  The list of challenges is still growing on the EDM Yahoo Group, and I believe they are up to 217 challenges now.  It’s not surprising that doing them daily causes a certain amount of repitition.  Weekly challenges done daily means the holidays are only eight weeks apart.  Last night’s challenge, draw a New Year’s resolution made me spend some time rethinking my goals.  Like so many other people around the world I see the new year as a jumping off point.  It is a clean slate on which to write your future.  Mistakes of the past can be overcome as another year brings new mistakes to be made.  Losing weight, taking better overall care of myself, and creating everyday are the three biggies that I resolve every year, whether I say them out loud or not.  Every couple of months, the EDM challenge makes stop and refocus on what I want and where I want to be.

One thing of note is that this was challenge 98.  I am almost half way through with the original list of challenges I set out for myself.  When I reach 100 there will be a couple of days of reminiscing and reviewing.  It is shocking to see the progress made from day one to now, and there are still 100 days of challenges left to go.  I will continue to post them daily on Sketching.cc and to the people following on Twitter, but the 100th challenge is a good “jumping off place” for my new web site.  The new site will go “Live” Monday, April 27th 2009 at 12:00 am CDT.  Tune in tomorrow for previews.

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EDM 98: Draw a New Year’s resolution

They say time flies when your having fun.  The perception of time passing depends on if you are waiting for something to happen, if you are happening, or if it has happened.  You wait forever for the weekend to get here.  The weekend flies by in a blur.  The next thing you know you are trying to remember if something happend this past weekend or six years ago.  Little kids are always waiting on something, but they are always doing something too.  They are learning constantly and that puts time in a unique perspective for them.  There used to be parenting commercials about “Kid Minutes.”  The idea is that when you do things with children that involve time, you should remember that the child’s age in years is the number of minutes that seem like an hour.  That is to say that to a three year old child, three minutes feels like an hour.  All week long Girl2 whined and cried for her mother.  “I just want to snuggle her and hold her forever,” she would cry.  The wife came back from her conference in the wee hours Saturday morning.  When we went to pick her up, the kid ran full speed and dove into Mom’s arms.  There was much kissing, laughing, and hugging.  For about three minutes.  Then she went to her coloring books.  The bride and I have been trying to spend as much time together as we can without (killing each other).  It still wasn’t enough time and we soon have to go back to work.  I believe that I will quit referring to the “speed of light” and instead I will speak in terms of “the speed of weekends.”

At 2am this morning, I was relieved to see the EDM challenge was a free drawing.  At least I didn’t have to traipse around outside or search the internet for a reference.  A quick sketch of my Pentel Clic Eraser and I was off to bed.

Also, now that my beautiful young bride has returned to me, I once again have access to the digital camera.  Now I can post the results of Tuesday night’s figure drawing group.  There were a couple of these that I really liked.  I was late getting there and felt rushed for the first thirty minutes or so.  It was obvious in my sketches.  There are a few things I learned this week though:

1.  I don’t like using oil pastel sticks for sketching.  I guess I can’t feel it on the paper and I find myself looking at my paper more than the subject.  This may change over time, but for now I believe I will switch to conte crayon.

2.  I find it very disconcerting to make eye contact with the model.  I am the kind of guy that within five minutes of meeting someone of the opposite sex I begin talking about my wife, even in my dreams.  When this stunning young lady made eye contact with me, I began looking more at the platform she was sitting on, the other furniture in the room, and I even stopped to watch the progress of the artists on either side of me.  Not very conducive to skill development.

3.  I learned that my knowledge of scientific anatomy (B.S. in Biology) has little or no bearing on artistic anatomy.  As a matter of fact, knowing the parts are there made me want to draw things I couldn’t see, but it did not help me understand the structures that I could see.  I found myself filling in things not there, and getting the proportions and placement wrong.  Especially after having to look down for the oil pastel stick.

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EDM 97: Free choice