Art Resolutions

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?