This month’s goal is to start a daily drawing practice, so I purchased a copy of Betty Edwards’ book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Here are some early sketches.

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 3: Here is a sketch of Juan. For this, I used a board Maya had stored on a shelf which takes some getting used to. Edwards’ suggested trying it out for drawing. 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.

And a trace of a photo of Juan sitting on the porch one morning.

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 6 I 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!