30 Days of Drawing – 12.26.11

12.26.11 drawing of Shelby

Tonight, while I was listening to my weekly tele-conference class “Your Best Life in the Arts” with Eric Maisel, I doodled in my sketchbook and took in what Dr. Maisel was talking about. The subject tonight was “The Societal Key” and how as artists we might censor ourselves to fit in with our society’s conventions. It was a very interesting talk, especially since I’ve been pondering this myself. I’ve found myself censoring what I felt like painting because I thought no one would want to buy it–not because it was poorly executed, but because of the subject matter. So the timing was pretty uncanny.

My cat Shelby was of course next to me on the couch. Whenever I’m sitting, she’s either on my lap or next to me. The doodles I doodled during the conference didn’t do much for me as a whole, but some of them I felt could be studies for stamp designs, or explored more and used in other ways. After the tele-conference was over, I sat there and thought, and looked at Shelby, sleeping so peacefully. So I sketched her. As soon as I started, she moved. If you look between her head and back legs, you can see the ear I first drew. Then follow that down into the back legs and you can see the first head. Filling the background in with color helped detract from it, but there wasn’t much I could do on her back legs. That’s ok. I’m just drawing. And it’s a sweet sketch of her. She’s old, around 19. So later down the road it’ll be nice to have all of these sketches of her once she has moved on to her next adventure.

I used my Sharpie fine-point pen and my Koi watercolor set. My other cat, Goliath, didn’t quite make it into the drawing. He’s the black shape on the left. You can see the rest of my posts for 30 Days of Drawing here.

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6 Comments

  1. This is very timely for me to read today- do I only create for others, or fr myself, o a bit of both? I probably do a little of all three at times. Love th sketch too, our pets am great subjects especially as they tend I move!

  2. Art Journaling came to me at exactly the right time in my life. I haven’t been working because I’ve been “too busy” (I am SO sick of saying that) and art journaling is something I can do anytime, anywhere, and for as much or as little time as I have available! I am finally working again and have set a goal of doing something every day for a year to kickstart my artist life. I refer to your work time and again to stay inspired. Thank you for sharing your art and yourself!

    • Michelle, I’ve found it’s a habit for me to say “I don’t have time . . ” It comes out of my mouth before I realize it! And because of that, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Something I’m paying attention to.

      Thanks for your nice comment!

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