good morning llamas

So I got the Let’s Make Art Good Morning Spring Journaling Course. It’s described as “art journaling,” but it’s really just about establishing a daily art habit, which I already have. I signed up anyway because I’ve enjoyed so many of their free videos and want to support them and was craving more content. It was neat to see I already follow most of Sarah’s habit-building tips:

• Setting a consistently achievable goal: I set the lowest possible goal! It’s ANY ART daily. It’s surprisingly good. I enjoy art, so if I just get started, I often end up doing a lot. And if I’m not feeling it, I can doodle generic anime guy #258 and call it a day.
• Establishing an “art space” and removing barriers to entry: I typically keep my sketchbook sitting open at my desk. Boom, done. This sounds flippant but it’s actually a huge deal. It makes me way more likely to draw than if it’s sitting in my backpack literally three feet away.
• Other mental scaffolding: I have a “daily drawing” task on Habitica, and it’s my habit before bed to mentally review my dailies and see if I missed anything.

The big difference between our styles is that Sarah designates her daily watercolor journaling as solitary/undisturbed “me time.” It makes sense for watercolor, but as a sketch artist I tend to be more flexible. I often draw during meetings or while hanging out with friends on discord. It helps me come up with ideas and has more of an actual “journal” feel (in that it reflects what I was doing on that day).

Anyway, the real exciting part is THE PROJECTS. Big project drop last Friday, with more to come on a weekly basis. Mostly florals and floral-adjacent pics (leaves, fruits), plus a few landscapes. I’m still working on integrating all these landscapes/florals into my usual illustrative character-focused style. The entirety of dragontober last year was like “Do I just plonk this dragon into this landscape, or what?” with an entire gamut of responses:

• yes
• make the dragon part-tree
• use the dragon as a framing device (but not actually in the landscape)
• just do the landscape but add in a dragon silhouette somewhere
• no

It’s a long way off, but I’m tentatively planning on doing dragontober again this year. Should be a good time.