March is Sketchbook Month

Well, not officially. But it will be on this here blog. At least for this year.

Care to join me?

Life has been crazy busy lately with no signs of anything slowing down. As a result it’s been a real struggle to keep anything resembling a regular sketchbook. I still draw quite a bit but its always to please a client and meet a deadline. Rarely am I able to draw something I *choose* to draw for practice, to push myself, or just give myself a creative breather. As I’ve said before, I feel kind of a like a professional athlete who plays hard at every game but then never has time to come to practice.

Character designer Stephen Silver does absolutely brilliant work and one reason is that he’s a ferocious sketcher. He’s fond of saying, “A page a day keeps the competition away.” So that’s my goal for March. Do a page a day for an entire month. (To make it more manageable I’m going to limit myself to weekdays only, otherwise I might get discouraged and fall off the wagon.)

As an extra motivation I’m pledging to post at least one drawing from each day’s work here on the blog. Not because I think my work is so wonderful—quite the contrary, I can be very hard on myself. No, I’m primarily doing it because frankly I need the accountability.

Of course knowing that whatever I draw will wind up here in full public view leaves me tempted to play it safe and only sketch things I’m already good at drawing. But that would defeat the whole purpose. If I’m going to continue to grow and improve I’ve got to push myself to try new things and master new skills, whatever the results may be.

If you’d care to join me in this unofficial “Sketchbook Month”, leave a link to your blog/website in the comments section you can do so by visiting the official Sketchbook Month blog.

March is a month of new beginnings when the snow melts away, the grass turns green, and the birds start to sing. What better time to shake the dust off my sketchbook and start turning over new pages?

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