Keeping Motivated for a Daily Art Practice

What keeps you motivated for a daily art practice?  Do you keep a daily Artist's Journal?  I love to keep one where I sketch in pen and watercolor, and it's a great place to paint what inspires you for that day, try out new subjects or techniques, record what you see during an outing...the possibilities are endless!  It's your journal!

For instance, on the day I sketched this dragonfly, I had revisited the old deck of Medicine Cards I hadn't seen in years and blindly selected the Dragonfly card.  Oh, I've always been intending on drawing a dragonfly and that day was as good a day as any!

Many times I am inspired because I have seen a particular subject or technique from an artist online that I want to try.  On my favorite Facebook artist groups I saw a couple folks posting a technique of painting a watercolor wash first, then drawing over the wash in pen.  How fun!  I thought I'd give it a try.  It's a very nice technique for when the subject is rather colorless.  Even ordinary household items suddenly look artistic!

One recent morning I noticed beautiful morning light streaming into the kitchen counter so I grabbed some berries from the refrigerator and took some photos of them in that light (because I knew the light would be gone before I could paint it).  The berries cast wonderfully long shadows.  I wanted to play with painting shadows in watercolor, and this gave me the opportunity.

If it's lovely outside I will step out with my sketch kit and find something that draws my eye to sketch, whether it be a grand landscape or urban scene or the detail of a plant. Of course, if the day involves any kind of errand or outing, it's a prime opportunity to sketch something!  A recent meeting of the Southern Arizona Climber's Coalition at our local Barrio Brewery provided one such opportunity to capture the lovely stained glass faux balcony doors in the room, and get some practice quick-sketching people too!

And if I'm at a loss, I search out my own collection of photos, or I look online at places like morgueFile,  Paint My Photo, or Wikimedia Commons (to avoid copyright infringement) for photos that tweak my interest and sketch those.

It helps to have on-going projects. I am working on some "retrospective" trip journals, sketching photos from past trips I did before I got into sketching. It's a great way to reminisce about wonderful trips you've taken.

I also am in an Artist Trading Card exchange project with fellow artists, and I use my Artist's Journal to explore certain ideas first.


There are so many ways you can keep motivated for a daily art practice, whether in you Artist's Journal or in other journals and art projects too!  I hope you have some ideas and inspiration for your own daily art practice!

Ellipse Exercise

Drawing ellipses in correct perspective is one of my difficulties, and where I could use a lot of practice.  I was flipping through my copy of Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing and I ran across an exercise in Chapter 5 that gives me just that opportunity to get some of that practice.  He has you gather at least five items of varying heights and widths that contain plenty of ellipses in their shapes and draw a still life of these items.

So what you see here is my attempt at this exercise.  After gathering my items, setting up the still life on a large sheet of white paper, I begun drawing the ellipses in these items, lightly in pencil.  Bert Dodson has you "draw through" each ellipse, meaning, even though the ellipses may be partially hidden by the inherent opacity of the object, or by another object, draw the complete ellipse anyway.

Make sure the shape of the ellipse is correct, as it will vary according to your perspective.  Near eye level, ellipses flatten; below (or above) eye level they begin to round out closer to a circle.  So in my case, the top ellipses (the top rims of the beer glass, beer bottle, and mortar, etc.) are flatter than the bottom ellipses of these objects.

Though he doesn't specifically say to, I also drew a vertical line through each object indicating the central axis so that my ellipses align.

Once I was satisfied with my ellipses, I drew the shapes in ink, using the ellipses as guidelines.  I did not bother erasing the penciled-in axis and ellipse lines, as I wanted to remember the process I went through to create this.  I painted the objects and cast shadows with watercolors.

I should do this more often...it's a good exercise!

Traveling Sketchbook -- My Part is Complete!

In my last post I showed the trial run of my contribution to the Traveling Sketchbook...well now I bit the bullet and did the real thing!  I like it.

So the Traveling Sketchbook moves on to the next person!

Traveling Sketchbook Project -- Prep Work

Trial run first in my own sketchbook!

Our Tucson Sketchbook Artistry Guild is doing a Traveling Sketchbook Project, where we each contribute 2 pages of our own sketching into a sketchbook, then pass it on to the next artist.  When the book is filled, we plan to auction it off at a future art show.

The theme of this sketchbook is "Flight", and when I learned of that I immediately envisioned sketching from a photo I took at Puerto Pinasco in December 2006 of some seagulls soaring above us.  We got their attention because my husband was tossing up bits of dog food, and they would catch it mid-air and gobble it down.

I am actually the first to sketch in this book, and I feel a little nervous about it.  So of course, I first did a trial run in my own sketchbook (image above).  This allows me to work out the process and see if the color schemes I have planned will work.  I could then use it as reference when I do the real thing.

To do this trial run in my own sketchbook (which is 5.5x8.5", yielding a 8.5x11" double-page spread), I drew the birds first in pencil into my sketchbook using the grid method.  Basically, I printed out a copy of my photo on an 8.5x11" sheet of paper, slipped it into a clear plastic sheet protector, and drew a 1" square grid directly onto the plastic sheet protector using a Sharpie marker.  Then I drew the same 1" square grid lightly in pencil in my sketchbook, then drew the birds lightly in pencil.  After a few erasures and corrections, I inked in the lines of the front bird in pen when I was satisfied with the drawing.  I also wrote the word "flight" first in pencil, then in pen.  I erased pencil lines where I drew over in ink, but left the pencil grid lines (they don't show up in the scan), and the pencil lines of the second bird.  I used masking fluid to protect the "flight" lettering.

Then it's time to paint.  I first wanted to do a light underpainting of the birds in soft grays, but I wanted the pigments that make up the gray to separate into warm and cool tones.  I normally would have mixed Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna for my grays, but this time I wanted to try something new.  After some deliberation, I discovered I also like the grays resulting from a mix of Daniel Smith Pyrrol Orange and Daniel Smith Cobalt Teal Blue, with a touch of Cerulean Blue.  I like how soft the resulting grays are, and there is just the amount of warm and cool tone separation I was looking for.  For the sky I used clear water where the soft clouds were to be located, then while the paper was wet I painted in Cerulean Blue (with a touch of Ultramarine and Violet mixed in) for the blue sky areas.  When the underpainting of the birds was dry, I layered in with the Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna mixes.  I quite like how it turned out!

Next I will be working in the actual traveling sketchbook!  It sure helps my confidence to have already done a trial run of it in my own sketchbook.

The actual traveling sketchbook is quite a bit larger than my own sketchbook--11x14" opening to a 14x22" double-page spread.  Wow!  I can't recall when I've ever worked that big before.  To reduce risk in the drawing aspects of it, I taped together two 11x14" sheets of sketching paper, and drew an enlarged version of the drawing using the grid method.  I am now experienced in the grid method, so this is not so difficult.  The key for expanding to the needed size is to measure the grid out to the expanded dimensions.  In this case I used a 1.75" grid size (expanded from the 1" grid size).

So that is where I'm at now...  Next I will overlay my sketch paper drawing onto the double-page spread of the actual sketchbook and use transfer paper to transfer the drawing onto the sketchbook page (thus avoiding having a pencil line grid in the sketchbook).  Then I will ink & paint, like I did in in the trial run.  Wish me luck!