IT ONLY TOOK 365 DAYS

Hello, on December 31st I wrapped up a daily art challenge where I did at least one full drawing every day of 2021, and streamed the process on my twitch. I'm going to share some of my thoughts on the journey in this news post, they're gonna be a bit disjointed and maybe contradictory at times, but you know, that's part of the fun.

To start I figure I'll explain the "why?" and give a brief overview of the year.

2019 and 2020 were my two least productive years in terms of art. The pandemic did not help matters, but it wasn't the main cause. I would get home from the day job, and sit around watching stupid shit I didn't care about on Youtube; and wait for inspiration to strike when I should have been getting to work drawing.

So on January 1st, 2021 I woke up and did my first stream with the intent to see how far I could get, after considering streaming more art after I did like half of inktober 2020 on my twitch.

A week of dailies went by, then a month, then two, then I hit 100 days and at that point I was locked in.

Full disclosure: there were twelve or so days last year that my internet was down, so there was no stream, but I still drew those days and posted the art.

The last three months were the hardest as I was working close to full time and doing the streams while trying to fit going out and seeing friends and family as well since everyone I knew was vaccinated and the world was opening up again. It all ended up working out despite being utterly exhausted by Christmas time

To any artists considering something like this: I do not recommend it. It isn't a good or sustainable practice to try and do a full original composition every day; the quality of some of my pieces are a testament to that. There were quite a few strings of days where I was just drawing to fulfill the challenge, and they just look blah. There were days when I got home past midnight and set up to do a thirty minute stream so I could pass out immediately after uploading.

Drawing or sketching every day is great, but being beholden to do so arbitrarily is not so great.

The flipside of this is that there is now a ton of art that I have done, which would have never existed if I didn't do this. I have concepts and compositions that I'm definitely going to be returning to in the future, whether it's to expand, redo or rework. I used techniques and color choices that I normally do not use and I experimented a lot with materials, which is a ton of fun having the freedom of knowing if it didn't work I'd have tomorrow's stream to try something that might.

One of the biggest skills I learned is to know when something is just not working early on; and more importantly to stop working on it and find another approach, or work on something completely different.

One regret I do have is that I didn't really have much time for studies, and had initially intended to do gesture drawing and portrait practice in March, when I thought by that point I would be done posting finished pieces. But I just kept pushing myself to finish the pieces and never got around to doing the learning streams. Overall those would have been more valuable than continuing to draw in my usual current style, but we all make choices I suppose. I have been asked by a few artist friends if I feel like i've improved significantly, I have to answer "not really" or "yes, but in the process rather than raw technical skill." I guess it boils down to "there are more productive ways to spend a year doing art, than just doing a punch of pieces." --But again I have to stress I did get a lot out of it in the mindset and adjustments to the process.

Even though there were days that I really didn't want to hop on and stream art, I'm glad I did, it was a lot of fun and having the chat there definitely kept me just engaged enough to not completely lose it. So if you ever dropped in the Stream, Commented on my Art Portal submissions, bought a piece, subscribed, said hi, or whatever else, thank you so much! It's super appreciated and I hope to produce a decent amount of art this year despite not going for 365.

I will be resuming the art stream (twitch.tv/sourcherryjack) later this week or next week. First stream back I'm going to go back and look through all the art and review them, what I like, what I don't like so much, what I remember about them etc. My first art stream back will be an ART FORUM ART WHORE stream where I will be drawing your requests from the thread I make in the art forum. Here is my last art whore thread

FAVORITE PIECE OF THE YEAR

JAR MONSTER