Last month’s meditation challenge with the 10% Happier app went pretty good. I was able to log 5-10 minutes of meditation each day, sometimes 20 or 30 if you include additional walking meditation— & in a short time I could feel I was in less reactionary moods & had more focus.

So I decided to try another challenge this month—this time drawing. I purchased a copy of Betty Edwards’ book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain which I read over twenty years ago when I was in the habit of sketching more frequently. Early on, Edwards suggests working on three preliminary drawings:

• your hand
• a self-portrait
• a person from memory
  

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Day 1: I sketched my hand while helping Maya with her Math homework one night on a loose white sheet of paper using a Ticonderoga Noir pencil. I didn’t intend to start then but it went pretty quickly, and it didn’t come with the nervousness that I usually feel when starting out in a brand new sketchbook.

Day 2: A self-portrait.

Day 3: Here’s a sketch of Juan (I have yet to draw a person from memory!)

Edwards
talked about using a drawing board (using one larger than the one shown). I used a board Maya had stored on a shelf which takes some getting used to. I usually write in a notebook on a table or on my lap. I used a purple color pencil & sketched this in about 5 minutes.

On Day 4, I took a photo of my boots & traced the image using Procreate on an iPad using an Apple Pencil.  Tracing is probably outside the logic of using the Betty Edwards book where the purpose is to shift to R-mode when drawing. But on my sub-list of learning to draw is also learning how to use some of these digital apps.

Day 5: This vase-face exercise & Day 6 was working on replicating this line drawing of Picasso’s Portrait of Igor Stravinsky—while it is upside-down.

Edwards suggests taking 40 minutes alone without interruption to work on this—in silence if you can. I worked on it for ten minutes and had one interruption. As you can see, I ran out of space for his head!

As of today, I’m a couple of days behind and have some work to do.