When I started creating sketches with dates for the COVID check in station, I didn't anticipate how much joy they would bring me--and how much I might learn by doing them.
I decided that I wanted to create a sketch for the Monday after Easter that wasn't too Eastery. I decided on a realistic portrayal of a bunny. Here's the finished sketch, which I did in about 5 minutes:
I feel like the rabbit in the above picture has a winsome look, or maybe it's a meditative kind of awed look. Whatever it is, I confess it's an accident. I started with the nose and worked out from there. If I worked in pencil, there's a few places I might have revised; one of the benefits of working in pen is that I can't go back meaning I can't make a certain kind of improvement, but also that I can't ruin a piece by revising it into a wreck.
Here's what's really interesting to me--it was born out of failure. Just 5 minutes earlier, I had made this sketch.
Both sketches used different photos of real rabbits, but still--what a difference in the two. I'm not exactly sure of why--it's not like I suddenly developed powers of sketching in 10 minutes. The sketch above was wrong from the minute I did the nose, and then the legs were wrong, and sometimes, it's good to give up and move on to the next sketch.
I like to make sketches a bit in advance, so that I can have them sit on my desk and enjoy them for a bit.
For the April 1 sketch, I didn't intend to have a mention of April Fools. I drew the tree and liked it, and began to write the date, as I had been doing for weeks before M A--and then I thought, rats, I'm up to April. But happily, my problem solving brain acted quickly. No need to cross out my mistake--make it look like I did it on purpose.
I love these sketches in part because for so many years, I thought of myself as someone who couldn't draw. Now I draw every day.
But more than that, I love them because they remind me of how much we can accomplish, even if we only have 5 or 10 minutes a day.
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