Day 13

December 13, 2014 / LadyGrave / 2 Comments

Almost two weeks into the December Sketch-a-Day Challenge and I am caught up. What’s more, I never even fell behind—I’ve actually sketched something every day so far! I’m not going to post every sketch here, but I’ve been doing a series of portraits based on Photobooth pictures of friends (along the lines of the self portrait I posted last time). Here they are! Various levels of completed-ness, of course, and all created entirely in Adobe Photoshop. Thanks so much for letting me draw you, friends!

NaNoWriMo and December Sketch-a-Day Challenge

November 30, 2014 / LadyGrave / 1 Comment

I finished NaNoWriMo today. I wrote my 50,000 words, and that’s a wrap for November. Here’s the graph; I even managed to stay pretty close to par all last week, despite traveling to Boston for a really lovely Thanksgiving dinner and weekend with cousins and friends.

I have a lot more time to do creative work than I thought I did, but I need to be working hard every month of the year, not just November. Last year, in the wake of NaNoWriMo, I instigated a Sketch-a-Day challenge for December. I didn’t finish in time, but Ruthanne of A More Colorful Life sure did and I still think it’s a great idea. So this year, I’m doing it for real. If you need an artistic kick-in-the-pants, please join us! I’ll link to your blog if that’s where you’re posting December sketches, and if you’d like to join the online December Sketch-a-Day Challenge community, do a Facebook search for the group I made (it’s called December Sketch-a-Day Challenge) and request to join. The goal is 31 sketches, 31 days.

The Sketch-a-Day Challenge is my big goal for December, but I don’t want to stop writing. I also don’t think I told you anything about my NaNoWriMo novel? It’s the self-indulgent telepathic dragon novel I never knew I had to write, and I don’t think I’m even fifty percent through the story at 50,000 hastily-written words. I have a lot of good stuff, especially good ideas, but a lot of those words are unusable and a lot of them will change once I figure out some answers to the Big Story Questions, and I’m finally at a place where I know which Big Story Questions I should ask. So I’m going to keep working on it. Most especially, I am going to take some time for outlining and researching and organizing—all the things I didn’t have time for during NaNoWriMo. I know I need to do lots of non-word-count related work on the story, and I know my sketch challenge will take up the majority of my daily creative energy, so I am setting a very small writing goal of 500 words a day. This makes a total of 15,500 words for the month. That’s sure a significant drop from 50,000, and I’ll top it if I can, but I think 500 words and one sketch every day will be enough to be getting on with. And I think I’ll get tired. But I think I can do it.

What are your goals for December?

Ruminations on The Struggle

February 28, 2014 / LadyGrave / 2 Comments

So I’ve ben sketching. It took me three months to post 31 sketches, but this week, I’ve done that many since Wednesday. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the struggle to make art, about what it all means. I’m at a point in my life when I’ve recommitted myself to my artwork and writing countless times, and I’ve been ruminating on how delusional it is to believe, every single time, that I’ve figured it out, that this is what I do from now on, that I won’t need to recommit myself again because this is it, forever. I’ve been thinking about how invigorated I am by change, by new routines and new ways of working, and how bizarre it is that with each NEW thing I think I have found the thing that will ALWAYS work. I’m realizing it is the change itself that always works.

This scares me, because I worry that in my quest for change, for newness, I will never be able to finish anything. This reassures me because I have been working on Wanderlust, a single project, for seven years, and I’ve never given up on it, not even for an instant. I get discouraged and stop working on it for months or years at a time, but I never truly lose sight of it, and I’ve never considered quitting. It’s only my methods of working that change.

I read an internet article recently about what separates amateurs artists from professionals. One of the things listed was that amateurs are always working, always perfecting, and never finished (I’ll try to find the article again to post later on, but right now I’m trying to finish this post before work). If I want to make the leap from amateur to professional, I have to start finishing things. I have to start sending Wanderlust out, I have to start getting rejections. I’ve been thinking about the amount of work I need to complete before I can do that, and I’ve been thinking about how to get it done.

We had one warm day last week. It got up to fifty degrees (F). I’m still in a good mood.

My current New Thing is returning to traditional media for sketches. It’s important to work with yourself, I think, to make things as easy as you can for yourself when you are asking for big efforts and great things. I, for instance, have developed an aversion to pencil dust. I don’t like it on my fingers, I don’t like how it collects in the bottom of my backpack when I store pencils and a sharpener in one of the pockets. So I was sketching with pen, for a while, and I bought some mechanical pencils the other day. They’re pretty annoying for filling in large spaces, and using them for loose work goes against everything I’ve been taught, but for right now they’re what I need for remembering anatomy and working through thumbnails as I prepare to dive into, and maybe finally complete, some real work and some illustrations for Wanderlust.

31 Sketches

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014 / LadyGrave / 8 Comments

Back in December, I promised you 31 sketches; one for every day, to be completed by the end of the month. Obviously, I fell a little short. I’M REALLY BAD AT THINGS SOMETIMES. Today, February 23rd, I’m finally giving you 31 sketches. They’re at the bottom of this post. It may be months late, but I’d like to say “I did it,” so I can move on. Before scrolling down, though, you should browse over to someone’s blog who isn’t bad at things, who actually completed the sketch challenge on time, and who met all her artistic goals for the year. And who I don’t think I actually said Happy Birthday to, even though her birthday is the same day as mine. So! A belated happy birthday to my Aunt Ruthanne of A More Colorful Life, born on the best day for birthdays, and a big congratulations to her for completing all her goals this year. Check out her sketches for the sketch challenge (Sketching Again, Still Sketching, More Sketching, Sketching and Beyond!), her first big painting, her art doll with the best hair, and her tie-dye art quilt (that doubles as the blog banner!). This year, she’s already set a new goal to make 50 paintings. It’s really inspiring to see someone actually doing all the art stuff they want to do, and I hope I can follow Aunt Ruthanne’s example into this next year.

Oh, and here are those sketches. If you’d like the bigger version of anything, just let me know.

Name Doodle Prizes (part 2)

February 28, 2013 / LadyGrave / 3 Comments

Almost done with all the prizes! The two bonus winners will get theirs tomorrow.

First, my Aunt Ruthanne. Not really sure what to say about this one; it started out as a cross between a brontosaurus and Nessie, and now it looks more like a cross between a cow and a fish and Nessie. For Ruthanne’s Race to the 8th entry, I blogged about blogging. (And, by the way, she DID start her blog on the 8th: A More Colorful Life.)

Next up, Jess, of Icarus Falls Design. I think it’s an elf. For Jess’s Race to the 8th entry, I wrote about how character’s names motivate me to get writing.

For Caitlin of The Hopeful Heroine, I did a sketch of someone who could be a heroine in a middle grade novel. For Caitlin’s Race to the 8th entry, I wrote about a moment from our shared summer in Ireland.

And last for today, the honorable and excellent Lady Higg of Ales to Stouts. She gets a wolf, because SOMEDAY I hope to see a finished, published version of her high school novel about magical wolves and their adventures. For Lady Higg’s Race to the 8th entry, I wrote about how the writing process has changed since I graduated college.

Thanks for playing, everyone! Bonus winners, you will get your prizes very soon, and likewise I will email quality jpgs of the prizes I’ve already posted very soon as well.

-Grace out