30 Days of Drawing Evie

Random Observation/Comment #613: Take advantage of your technology as a tool instead of being a tool to your technology. (Seems like a 90s catchphrase).

Why this 30 Day Challenge?

I’ve recently found myself playing too many mobile games or getting sucked into always being connected to work via slack and emails. To do a level of disconnecting and taking advantage of the Samsung Note 9 stylus, I decided to do a 30 day drawing challenge around drawing the anime version of Evie.

When Evie was born, I had a web comic I planned around “Adventures of Evie and Hencat” with inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes. I drew lots of sketches of characters and came up with a few 3 panels which I thought would be a cute way to tell about the joys and struggles of fatherhood. One day I’ll publish them, but drawing web comics are not easy. I also don’t consider myself a good artist (even though I can now probably sketch random things on bar napkins to look eccentric and straight from an origins movie).

How was it done?

In terms of logistics, I tried a lot of different writing and artist apps, but they all seemed too complicated. For some reason the simplest one for me was to just use Microsoft OneNote. There’s no “fill” (color fill like from paint) or partial erase features (you erase by vectors drawn), but I’m used to writing with ink in a notebook, so I wasn’t too concerned.

The features that made me use OneNote:

1. User Experience — A lot of the drawing apps weren’t recognizing the difference between the stylus and the finger, so I wound up drawing extra lines when my pinky was resting on the small screen
2. Infinite scroll and canvas — I did all my drawings on a single continuous note scrolling downward and across as needed
3. Works with multi-screen — It was easy to dock OneNote on the bottom and bring up anime references on the top half of the screen
4. Default settings — I love how opening the mobile app automatically opens to the latest note (regardless of closing the app). This latest file functionality made it a one click to get to my drawing mode.
5. General familiarity — I probably could have used a more feature-full app. It’s like buying more paintbrushes or colors for an artist that just does simple black and white. This just worked for me.

I wound up drawing everyday when I felt the urge to open a mobile game. I use these games to de-stress, but I found de-stressing with drawing is just as effective.

Now What?

I’m still thinking about drawing more of the web comic, but it’s been depressing without Hencat. Perhaps this is a way to remind Evie of one of her earliest friends. I definitely love the habit and hoping to keep it up. Maybe I’ll do what all the cool kids do and make a separate Instagram account for it.

~See Lemons Love Drawing Evie

Originally published at https://seelemons.com.