Seven Months of Drawing Progress
And developing my style
After writing about 50 articles, I started publishing drawings on Medium in April. After the pandemic hit, I was looking for ways to stay creative, and to work on things I’ve always wanted to get better at.
Improving my drawing is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve been at it for 7 months now and have made some real progress.
April 2020
A therapy session I had inspired my first humor piece. In therapy, I was reflecting on the ways I’ve changed over the last decade. My first drawings reflected the level of drawing skill I’ve had for pretty much my entire life.
May 2020
I work on making my lines cleaner, adding in more details, and playing more with shading.
June 2020
I start to develop my own drawing style. To practice drawing different things, I grab items from my medicine cabinet and practice drawing them with more detail than I normally do.
July — August 2020
I continue to work on drawing every day items I have around the house and drawing things from old photos. I also work on adding more details to each drawing. It takes longer, but I enjoy having the extra little details as it makes the drawings come to life.
September 2020
By this point, I’ve really developed my own style and have begun trying out some new techniques. I experiment with stippling — a technique that involves drawing lots and lots of dots. It takes time and patience, but the effect is cool and makes things pop a lot more.
Now
I’ve started experimenting with doing some drawing on the computer. It’s been fun to add color to drawings and try out a new format, but drawing on the computer doesn’t allow me to get into a flow the same way hand drawing does. I’ll probably mix up hand drawing and drawing on the computer as I continue to explore new techniques and create new humor pieces.
So that’s 7 months of my drawing progress. It’s been a good reminder that with time, effort, and perseverence, you can make steady improvements. Even an elder Millennial like me :)
