Creatuanuary: My first daily drawing challenge

This blog discusses Creatuanuary - my first daily drawing challenge that I had begun in my last blog. That challenge is now completed!

At the end of this blog, I've included short sections called "Current projects" and "Coming up". I thought it might be good to have these in every post, but they need better names! I have some horror-themed names in mind, but comment below with your ideas and maybe you'll see those next month!

Creatuanuary (daily drawing)

Day 2: Jurogumo. I spent too much time shading this, and as a result it looks slightly more polished than some other sketches. However, I don't think it's the best drawing, so that time was somewhat wasted (but not wasted, as I learned from it). Although I don't love the execution, this is one of my favourite concepts I came up with and I'd like to take more time to explore it.Creatuanuary

I mentioned in my last blog that I had decided to try out some of the daily drawing prompts/challenges that you see online. I've never done one before!

I had two specific goals in mind:

1. Get into the habit of drawing every day (or most days).

2. Be able to complete small sketches in a short amount of time.

My main limitation was time. I have my day job, my personal art projects, and then other personal projects or hobbies - and I want to do all of them! This limitation also caused my main insecurity about it. I felt really bad about my sketches, because they weren't "proper artworks" or polished drawings. If I decided to look up what other people had done I felt even worse, as they had much more detailed and polished work.

So, I kept reminding myself that detailed, polished sketches weren't my goal. I needed to let go.

Day 11: Adlet. Probably my scribbliest sketch. I was tired, unmotivated, uninterested, and low on time. I hated this when I drew it, but the next day I started to think there was something cool about it. After this point, I felt like I managed to lose some detail in order to save time, with better results.

And I did!

Whether it was from lack of time or lack of motivation, I ended up doing looser sketches. I scribbled, instead of carefully shading with smooth transitions. This has mixed results - some drawings aren't as good as others. But the benefit is, I had 31 ideas sketched in 31 days, instead of one drawing that took a whole month (or longer!).

Now, I can pick anything that had something good and maybe spend more time turning it into something better.

Another outcome of this was confirming something I've said in a previous blog - my sketching style is different to my drawing and painting style. I really want to incorporate the way I sketch or doodle into my more "finished" drawings and paintings.

See three drawings below for examples of what I consider my more interesting sketching or doodling style.

Day 4: Umita

Day 8: Puca

Day 10: Titan

I originally thought I'd go in-depth on every drawing in this blog post but it's already pretty long and it might be a bit boring! I posted brief thoughts on Instagram with each sketch, but please comment below if you want to know more (I definitely have more I could say!). If you'd like, I could review each drawing, or just answer questions.

Click the right arrow to scroll through all 31 sketches below.

Day 31: Combine your favourite creatures and have it fight Feliciano the Faun. The final drawing of the challenge. The faun in my drawing is taken from a painting by Ludwig Knaus. My favourite drawings tended to be of composite creatures anyway (e.g. Puca and Manticore) so that was an easy place to start. The other drawings I identified as favourites all had humanoid faces and/or many long limbs (e.g. Jorogumo, Umita, Titan, and Mimic) so those were also easy thing to add.

Current projects

I'm continuing my daily drawing with Faebruary prompts (this was the only prompt list I found when I initially looked but now there seem to be more...). See progress on Instagram and Facebook, and a similar blog to this one next month.

I also mentioned last month that I had a book cover-related project in progress. I'm currently planning and doing some behind-the-scenes design.

Coming up

I'm thinking in one - two months I'll have something to show you from the book cover project. I'll also obviously have th Faebruary drawings next month.

Other things I've not yet started but want to get into soon are some new drawings and paintings. Some of these will be book cover-related, but the other ideas I'll probably prioritise are some of the Creatuanuary concepts.

As always, comment on this blog with any thoughts or questions!