100 days of drawing project 💚days 6-10💚 | trying new things! | long post ☕ (Patreon)

Hi!

It’s been a week! Which as always feels like ages to me. I missed you!

I didn’t expect to spend the last weeks of the year curing another cold. I used to take pride in being sick maaaybe once every 3 years, this season it’s more like every 3 weeks! At least I don’t have a fever anymore. The energy of the pre-holidays mode also helps a lot!

Despite all of this I managed to keep up with the 100 days project!

(I don’t encourage anyone to work while being sick. I do the bare minimum for the work stuff. Maybe even less than minimum, lol. This is a personal project and I want to keep up with it even on days when I’d rather stay in bed)

Let me show you what I did for days 6-10.

DAY 6 & DAY 7

The left side is day 6 and the right is 7.

I thought pilea peperomiodies could be an easy thing to draw. Well, I clearly forgot how many leaves this plant have :D

The post about the challenge rules etc is yet to come, but I can tell you now that I don’t have any prompt list, I don’t plan what do draw beforehand and for now it’s a bit chaotic.

I mostly use my sketchbook and everyday life as a source of inspiration!

At day 7 I started to feel a bit under the weather so instead of making a complex illustration, I decided to just draw this plant again.

To make it a bit more interesting, I went for a close up view of the plant. To make it more visually appealing, I added some stars and, something new, clouds!

a quick work in progress shot!

DAY 8

Holidays are coming!

I’m not very happy with how this turned out but I learned a lot while drawing it.

First off, I don’t think I’ve ever drawn this plant before. Dark leaves are much more difficult to color for me. I think these leaves are a bit too elongated in my illustration, but hey, that was a first attempt and there are more to come :D

I knew holly’s leaves are quite glossy and I really tried to portray this here but I failed. Maybe next time!

As you might noticed, this sketch is more messy than my usual sketches. I skipped the initial sketch part for most of it.

Besides, I figured these leaves are dark, so the messiness of the sketch doesn’t really matter.

Is this a magic of the daily drawing challenge in the works? Could it be?!

I’d never make a messy sketch for any of my “regular” drawings!

The “ugly stage” of this drawing seemed to last forever!!

With a few extra shades and the outline it looks much better!

There’s still a lot of space to fill in this spread, but I left it for another day.

DAY 9

Oookay, that’s new.

I really wanted to keep things simple that day. The idea of drawing snowflakes came out of nowhere.

I started from sketching snowflakes!

I outlined a candle and a shot glass to get circle shapes. Then I realized that without knowing where the center of the circle is, the snowflakes will to be crooked. It doesn’t matter cause these circle shapes helped a lot anyway. They don’t have to be perfect!

When was the last time I drew a snowflake? Probably in elementary school??!! (I’m in my 30s by the way)

It felt like a fun activity. I knew I wanted to use a white paint for this, just wasn’t sure whether I’m going to paint each snowflake or the whole page and then do kind of a negative painting technique. I went for the second option.

Besides, white paint makes the marker colors (especially blue and purple ones) look cleaner, which was really nice for this (kinda) frosty illustration.

I painted the whole page with white gouache.

When the paint dried, I colored the background blue and added extra outlines to the snowflakes, to make them stand out more.

You might see some of the brush strokes on this page as I’m still learning how to use just enough water for gouache (I tend to use either not enough or way too much)

What about the left page?!

I don’t know what got into me, really.

I know absolutely nothing about calligraphy, lettering and all this stuff. I’ve never even tried to learn about this. I just felt the need to grab some markers I used the day before and start writing some words. (please don’t judge the outcome, OKAY? :D)

DAY 10

Oranges again! (I think I finally figured out the right colors?)!

It’s a fun little spread in my yellow sketchbook!

I haven’t used this sketchbook in a few months! Mostly because it’s filled with nice, clean and complex illustrations and I didn’t want to “ruin it” with one bad page.

Oh my, what’s the worst case scenario here? A mediocre drawing in a “nice” sketchbook?

Come on! Yellow sketchbook is back in the game!

Summary:

It’s been only 10 days but I:

- am tempted to try new mediums (like... paints?!)

- drew something I wouldn’t draw otherwise (snowflakes)

- tried a new thing (lettering, kiiiind of)

- got more loose with the drawing process (no initial sketch?!)

- got rid of the fear of ruining a sketchbook (for now. It keeps coming back like a boomerang despite of months and months of regular practice!)

I wonder how things would look like once I get better!

I took one real life photo. Only later I realized this mistletoe illustration was made at day 11 but oookay!

I have much more to post. Like, sketches (a lot of sketches!), a video (that still needs a voiceover but atm I can’t talk for more than 5 seconds without coughing) and this month’s rewards!

I’ll do my absolute best to post phone wallpapers, a coloring page (most likely a festive one!) and reveal physical rewards, by this Friday! :D

See you in a few days!

Marta