I decided recently that I would like to try a drawing challenge. I need something to keep me drawing daily, as that is definitely not something I do (though I’ve been drawing much more than usual thanks to all of the lovely folks who are paying me or trading me for my art!) and I want more things to post about on this blog.
I looked around for some 30 day drawing challenges on Tumblr and Deviant Art, but none of them really interested me. Literally almost every challenge I found consisted of the same things: Draw yourself! Draw your favorite character from a book! Draw your best friend! None of them seemed like much of an actual challenge to me/the daily tasks bored me. This one was tempting, and maybe I’ll do it one day even though it’s meant as a photography challenge. I think mostly I’d like to draw the contents of our fridge:
But alas, I felt the biggest challenge I could take on would be the one I’ve tried and failed at so many times before: DIARY COMICS. And then to post about it on my new blog so that I can feel guilty if I find myself slipping up because the readers! They are few (and I love them) and they are waiting!
Oh, and I decided that I didn’t want to draw them in either of the styles I’ve drawn comics in before. So, that should be fun and all the more challenging! I’m sure there will be a lot of experimentation over the next month, finding what works best for me and doesn’t just feel like a copy of other peoples’ work, since my initial idea is indeed heavily inspired by other comics I’ve seen.
I won’t be posting a comic every day, as that would mean seeing comics to completion every. single. day., and I know myself well enough to know that won’t happen. Plus, as I learned in a diary comics workshop led by Sofie Yanow last June, it’s better to just try to get the general idea down each day, to figure out what message you want to convey and plot out how you want to frame things. Then you can go back when you have the free time to add detail, ink things in, color the page and so forth. This bit of advice seriously demystified the practice of diary comics for me. I’d never understood how people could keep up with them, because I thought they were drawing complete pages every day! (You sneaky comic artists, you!)
You can, however, expect updates on my process, sketches and a few completed comics. After all, I did say one of the reasons I wanted to do this challenge was to have material to post on this blog. I’m also taking on a few other daily/weekly challenges, but I’ll save talking about those for the comics themselves.
Coincidentally, June marks the fourth annual 30 Days of Creativity– an annual event in which people all over the world dedicate the month of June to all sorts of creative projects. What will you be doing this month? Are you taking on the 30 Days of Creativity challenge? I’d love to hear about your projects, too!
brianna darling dearest 