Practice Practice Practice!

animals in pencil

A lot of people seem to believe that in order to create art you must be born with some sort of special talent. I have always disagreed with this idea. Really think about this. If you were just born with a talent for drawing and painting then there would be no improvement with practice. You would just be able to create masterpieces from the get go.


This is soooo not the way it works.  I have been drawing and painting for as long as I remember. But there have been long stretches of my life where I did not make any art or I made other sorts of art like quilting or embroidery. When I take up my drawing pencils again after such a dry spell I must practice practice practice to re-train my eye and my hand.


One thing I am not so good at is drawing people, yet that is something I want to be really good at, so I am practicing! I work at it every day, doing at least one page in my sketchbook each evening.

fine point sharpie marker

And it does pay off. I have no attachment to my sketches, It's ok if the people look funny or even monstrous. It's ok if their eyes are too close together, or their foreheads are too short. It's ok if the perspective if off. Because each one teaches me what not to do next time. And since I"m not attached to the outcome I don't get frustrated with them like I sometimes do when I'm working on a canvas.

faces in pencil

Many of these faces are from random magazine photos and some from my facebook feed. They really don't look much like the photographs I worked from. But the point is to keep going and keep working and keep trying. Like they say, don't give up before the miracle happens.

wings, sharpie marker

random facebook pics in pencil

flowers in pencil

I did the flowers while I waited from mom at an appointment.  Some I sketched outright, others I laid down some graphite and smudged it, then "drew" with my eraser. I like working like that, very similar to drawing with white chalk on a black paper.

mom in pencil

random pics from my facebook

I drew mom while she watched TV, out of the corner of my eye so she wouldn't know what I was doing. She doesn't sit still much, seems like her mind is racing and she thinks of a 100 things to do all at once so she gets up and down a lot. It's really hard to draw a moving target!






Now for the fun part. Some of these actually have at least a slight resemblance to the pictures I used. Proportions are still a bit off but at least there is beginning to be a spark of reality within them. So never believe you must be born with some talent for drawing, you are perhaps born with a propensity towards it, something that draws you to the doing of it, but you must practice, practice practice!


I'm joining this to the great blog hop, Paint Party Friday.  I've also joined the Colour Me Positive challenge and if you missed my week 2 page for that, you can see it here.here

Malala Yousafzai = BRAVE

OK, I have no idea why Blogger persists in importing my photos the wrong way but it is very annoying. that said, this is my journal page for the Colour Me Positive 2nd week.

This weeks prompt was to Be Brave. The original quote given was "She took the leap and built her wings on the way down"

I pondered the challenge for 2 or 3 days finally outlining the words Be Brave in pencil while I thought about what to do with the rest of the page.

Then a meme came across my Facebook page showing Gabriel Giffords and Malala Yousafzai together. Both of these women are amazing for having both survived gunshot wounds to their heads.

So I googled them and downloaded and printed some pictures. But in the end I only used Malala's because of the space constraints of my page. I think this young woman is totally amazing. In many ways she and others like her are changing the world for the better.

I shortened the quote given to just "She took the leap and grew wings" as I liked that better.  I drew wings around her images and wrote "Be Brave * Grow Wings" in many areas. I think that may become my mantra for a bit. Be Brave. Grow Wings. Stretch your wings and fly.

Malala has certainly been brave. Despite multiple death threats against her and her father, she continues to speak up and speak out for education, for girls and women. And some places are listening to her and making changes for the better. I hope someday everywhere in the world has equality, amongst rich and poor, white and colored, men and women.


I'm sure there have been times when Malala was scared, but her brave heart beat on and gave her the courage to raise up her voice for those who had none.