⇑⇑ that is the title of so many blogs and vlogs all over internet and I have always been okayish in drawing. so thought of giving it a go.
the main challenge the #100daysketchchallenge is two fold
1, draw something everyday -- anything -- for 100 days at a stretch for at least for 5 minutes each day. after 5 minutes you are allowed to leave the picture unfinished, if you want or you can go on painting
2. post the same -- without judgement -- in your social media page
today is the 100th day and I missed only two days among the 100. the 77th and the 99th, which were particularly long days and I tried to make up for those days by making more sketches the following day. I completely forgive myself.
so how did this change my life?
well I learned a few things, I think, mostly about myself.
I will go with the bad thing first.
I HATED THE EXPERIENCE.
discipline and consistency is not my forte. I find them stifling. they are anti-freedom. It is bad enough that I have to try it at work, why bring this to something I do for fun? I remember how as a child I came to hate singing because of the reyaz. Also I designated late evenings for the drawings when I am often very tired, which did not help.'
what is the good thing about it?
first of all, I kept at it. Is that a good thing? I don't really know. gives a kind of ego satisfaction to be able to complete something. But that was not that important. what really became better by keeping at it?
I think my drawing skills have improved slightly, only slightly.
But what has been really helpful is that I learned a bit about the skills that I don't have, and that is very important. the youtube tutorials are quite a blessing. I don't have to get stuck by enrolling to a school and following their schedule and syllabus. I can be totally unsystematic in my approach and be better or not as and when I please.
I also learned that I CANNOT leave a drawing mid way. I HAD TO complete every sketch no matter how long it takes.
I learned that I have a huge amount of art supplies. If I do not buy anything to draw with at all from now on, I would be able to keep drawing for the rest of my life. Having said that, I again gathered a few MORE art things in this 100 days including a moleskin sketchbook from Italy.
One thing that has really improved is the time required to make a sketch of something. I have become much faster at it.
Also found out that drawing something out can be an outlet in times of trouble feelings. Girish Karnad and Kashmir are the two things that shook me during this 100 days. and trying to draw it out gave me something. I cant call it solace or peace. but it was still a way to deal with it.
the social network sharing part of the challenge was a bit difficult. myself not a really big fan of social network sharing - no - also my social network "friends" are not really bad people -- why torture them with my enormous talent?? so here I cheated a bit by choosing the newest social network that I adopted- the instagram- where till then I hardly posted anything and almost no one was following me. for some reason, few more people are following me now that when I started. poor things! I wont be bombarding you with daily postings now. only once in a while may be.
May be I will still try to continue with this practice most of the days or at least once a week. If I do not, I will certainly miss it and may even regret it later on.
finally one thing that REALLY changed in this 100 days -- and I am really surprised by this -- is that my way for holding pens changed. The picture on top is the way I used to hold it before and the one below is how I hold it now. What's more interesting is that my after grip is the way I used to hold the pencils as a kid. I was told by the adults is that it is the wrong grip and that is probably why my handwriting is so bad. So I kind of forced myself to change the grip. I think my handwriting improved. Unfortunately no one agrees on that with me.
I am glad I ended the challenge with this sketch of the before and after picture of how I hold pen or brushes in this particular case. It gave the experience a full circle as I started with the sketch of fists (used myself as model) to start this challenge on the May Day.
