Where I'm up to - Taking Stock

So, the last year got a bit busy and then ended... poorly. Not much arting got done. Except for a couple of covers, and I have yet to post on the how-tos of those. So, to start the new year, I took stock of where I'd been with my drawing and my picture-taking and so forth, and this year I vowed I would do better.

So, I took stock by looking back over what I had done last year, and identifying areas that needed improvement, and then I decided on a couple of projects.

• Refamiliarise with materials: I'm so out of touch with the whole painting and drawing thing that I've lost touch with what all that painting and drawing stuff can do. So, I found a book to help me along the way. Now, just doing prescribed activities probably isn't going to be enough, just as doing targeted writing activities wouldn't be enough to improve my writing. I also need to work on something that I really want to work on. Problem was, I didn't know what that was, so I fell back to a familiar theme and something that interests me at the moment.

• Dragons: Work on my dragons. Just keep drawing line drawings until I felt confident enough to move into other materials, such as coloured pencil, pastels (oil and chalk), and maybe... just maybe, watercolours or gouache. Maybe by the end of the year, I'll be seeing an improvement. In the meantime, here is last night's dragon sketch - unedited.

• Beetles: I had a few photographs that inspired this one, and I'd been pursuing these big 'Christmas' beetles for weeks until I'd worked out which trees I could find them on. And then I took photographs, and now I'm ready to draw. Not exactly sure what genre or style or whatever, but I'll figure it out.

• Spiders: They're an on-going fascination, but the beetles take precedence. 

• Problem Areas: highlighted by this picture. As you can see, I need to work on a lot of things: perspective, colour, plant shape and form, lizard anatomy, weapons and proportion. I'll start small and work bigger. Again, we'll see where it takes me.

First steps will just be to play within the themes above, and to start to enjoy drawing and the process of making pictures again - it has been a long time, since I did this, and I've missed it, but been too busy to get back to it. I figure it will take me a year before I can start thinking bigger projects. Baby steps, but it's time to get back into it.