Doodling

Last week I told you about a class I took on Craftsy that I wasn't thrilled with. I had been kind of excited to spend a blizzardy day doing that and wasn't exactly satisfied. I happened to come across a site that I had heard about but forgot about--Creativebug. You get a two-week free trial on the site, and one class to keep forever. If you like your experience, you pay $4.95 a month for access to over 600 classes on drawing, painting, sewing, knitting, and so on. So I decided to try it out with Basic Line Drawing with Lisa Congdon.

THIS was more what I was looking for--simple explanations of shape and form and technique, and the ability--actually, the enCOURagement--to make things imperfectly.

I tend to be a bit rough on myself with sewing/knitting/crochet that everything be as perfect as I can get it, and that adds a bit of stress to the creative process. I don't think that's what it's supposed to be about, but that's certainly how I'm wired.

I certainly felt more of a boost of confidence and wanted to draw all the things, haha. I ordered a couple books just as a bit of a creative guide--this one and this one. I spent several hours one Sunday morning just working my way through, picking and choosing.

I'm certainly better with some than with others, but I filled a few pages with different flowers and nature bits, some cartoonish, some a little more realistic, some very stylized.

 

Nowhere near perfect, but at least recognizable, for the most part. I've been advised not to quit my day job, haha, but it's nice to all of a sudden see everything broken down to simple terms and techniques and to have the 'permission' to just go with it and not worry about perfection.

I enjoyed the line drawing class so much that I took part in the January drawing challenge. Of course, it was the end of the month so I had to cram like it was a chemistry final, but I drew everything. I didn't take any photos of those items, but I have them in a wee book I've been keeping in my purse in case whimsy strikes.

As I was getting gas last week, I noticed a bunch of birds on some electrical wires, set against the backdrop of a very gray sky. So I snapped a pic thinking 'maybe I could do that.'

So I did a watercolor background of gray, and some line drawing in black. Not great (as I looked at my phone for reference instead of sending it to my computer) but I don't think it's terrible. At least I think it looks like what I meant for it to look like, haha.

You can tell as I went along that I started small and kept increasing the size of the birds a little, but they look like bird silhouettes and sometimes we have to take what we can get.

I am by no means close to anything approaching an artist, and don't believe I have the imagination to ever be one--I just can't dream up pictures or designs. But for now I'm content to just keep trying my hand at something new, and hopefully improving upon it.