drawanyway.com

One of the main ideas behind Draw Anyway is that you draw every day, even if you can only spare a few minutes to do so.

Of course, the blog format is really well suited toward that style of presentation, and if you are a veteran blog reader, the division of knowledge into short daily chunks is probably something you appreciate without necessarily giving too much thought to.

But there’s more to it than that. The simple fact is that the more you draw, the better you’ll draw.

I believe that every time you attempt to draw something, whether or not it was successful, you are building up your stock of artistic knowledge. Next time you come back to draw that thing, you’ll remember - perhaps subconsciously - ‘Ah, this worked last time’, or ‘that didn’t work - I’ll try it another way’.

And of course, there’s also the fact that by drawing a little bit every day, you are getting yourself into the habit of making time for art. That’s nothing but logisitics, but it shouldn’t be sneezed at. Life is busy these days, and arts take a back seat. We have to make a deliberate effort for it to be otherwise.

Finally, there is the simple truth that you are not going to become au fait with your materials unless you are using them, trying things out, discarding some ideas and retaining others. With practice, you will soon be able to predict how your chosen media reacts - that’s when you start controlling your pictures, rather than the other way round.

If you draw a picture every day, by the end of this year, you’ll have 136 pictures. By the law of averages, some of those are going to be pretty darn good. So this is just a reminder to draw - if not every single day, then as many as you can.

And don’t forget to come back and tell us all about it.