Last month my good friend and fellow artist, Stacy Kathryn Holst, challenged me to join her in filling a 64 page sketchbook in a month and we both did it!! (To see all of our sketches, check out the #augustsketches tag on Instagram.)
Filling two full sketchbook pages a day plus taking care of my 3 yr old full time plus making ceramic sculptures every day and filling jewelry orders kept me busy, to say the least.
Two days before the end of the month, I had 6 pages to go. The last day, I still had 4 pages to fill and we spent the whole day at the zoo. So, toddler and slushie in one hand and my sketchbook in the other, I sketched zoo animals as we walked around. I actually ended up putting my son’s slushie into my purse. (It didn’t spill!) And later that night, as my brother and I watched Bollywood epics, I finished the last two pages right at the stroke of midnight.
Awesome!
But, what’s the point of making 64 #augustsketches ?
I learned that I can still draw really well! Yes, I’m an artist, but I mostly work in 3-dimensions. In highschool and college, I did a lot of drawing, but after I found ceramic sculptures I stopped drawing much of anything because I was so busy playing with clay. It’s nice to see I haven’t lost any of it and if anything it’s easier to do now!
I enjoyed the chance to fix the real shape of plants and animals in my mind’s eye. You don’t really see something until you draw it. Drawing what a shell really looks like will help my hands know what to do when I’m sculpting a shell form out of clay!
I’ll soon have a 64 pg e-book I can send out for free to my email subscribers! Everyone got to see my sketches as I made them when I posted on Instagram and Facebook, but it’s different when you see them all together and in order. (If you aren’t already signed up for my email list, click here to get on board before I send the e-book out!)
With a little bit of narrating, this will be a great print book, too. One of the first thing friends and family asked me when I was home was, “Is this the book? Can I look at it?!” So, I’d love to make this month of sketching more accessible and more tangible for you, too. It feels good to surround ourselves with reminders of what people can do with their hands. In this digital world, we gain a lot, but we also miss so much.