During last year’s Arty Advent series I made some art resolutions. I actually did pretty well at keeping them.
The first one was to have less drawings floating in the middle of white nothingness. I still need to work on backgrounds, but I do tend to do more now. I do a little hint of floor, or a shape in the background.
Sometimes I do a pattern in the background.
Sometimes I do a simple-ish border.
Sometimes I do a hint of something that fits the theme of the piece.
Sometimes I’ll cut out the drawing and stick it on a piece of patterned paper, or use some washi tape.
And occasionally – but not often enough – I’ll do a full background.
I even did a completely over-the-top detailed piece for Halloween.
My second art resolution was to practice digital drawing. At the start of the year I got myself a Lenovo Yoga laptop that has a touch screen I can fold back – and I started drawing on that. I did some pieces I was really pleased with.
And I did lots of pieces I wasn’t at all happy with – which I will not be showing you :-p Near the end of the year I got a cheap tablet and have been having lots of fun working with that, making a lot of improvement. I’ll be writing a blog post about that later.
My third resolution was to finish some of the million half-started pieces. I do still have a bunch of pieces to finish, but I definitely don’t have the 50+ I had when I wrote that post. I’ve finished some of them, but I’ve also culled a lot of them. When I sketch, I have a tendency to decide it needs to be a completed sketched, inked and coloured piece. So things pile up. I’m trying to teach myself that just sketching is okay.
The fourth resolution was to have a go at using different mediums. I’ve been bitten with the watercolour bug this year, and find myself reaching for them quite often.
And thanks to Scrawlr Box I’ve had a chance to try lots of new mediums including oil paints (which you can read about here), gouache (which you’ll be able to read about in a few weeks), watercolor brush pens (which you can read about here), and Chameleon colour-changing fineliners (which you can read about here).
My last art resolution was to try to do some collaborations. In October I did a line art swap with Nina, and then in December we did another one.
So do I have some art resolutions for 2020? Sort of. I have lots of plans, and lots of ideas, but you’ll be able to read about them all in a couple of days.
What about you? Did you have any art resolutions this year? How did you do?
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