Prompt 24 - Something old and something new
No, I’m not talking about weddings
Most of my days follow a routine. It goes something like this: get up, shower, get myself ready, get the kid ready, get her to preschool, tea & journaling, start working, walk the dog at lunch, pick her back up after work, dinner, bathtime, bedtime, hope to get some time to draw. Repeat the next day.
Don’t get me wrong, routines are generally a good thing. They help reduce stress, and make everything more manageable.
But sometimes we get stuck doing things a certain way, even though we’ve long forgotten why. For example, I’ve gotten into the habit again of brainlessly scrolling on my phone to wind down in the evening. Obviously, not great. It takes time away from what I really want to do, like spend more quality time with my family, call my friends who live in other countries, draw, read, write, and much more.
Sometimes it’s important to shake things up, to take the things we’ve always done, and do them differently.
The Activity: Use your favourite art supply in a new way
Step 1: The way you used to do
Note down the answers to the following questions:
What is your favourite art supply? The one you have been feeling most comfortable in, or maybe a recent new favourite? For example: coloured pencils.
How are you using it? Which drawing style, which paper? For example: very light tones, layers of colours, no blending, mixed media paper
What do you normally draw? For example: portraits of people.
Step 2: How can you do it differently?
Looking at questions two and three, ask yourself how you can change things up. Maybe there is an exact opposite to what you’ve done before? Or a different technique you’ve always wanted to try? Or a different motif you can draw?
For our example above, instead of drawing a light coloured portrait, you could use the coloured pencils with strong saturated colours, drawing a nature scene.
You can also have a look at some videos on YouTube for inspiration to see how are people are using your favourite supply.
Step 3: Enjoy exploring
Get to drawing, and have some fun. As always, don’t worry about how it looks. This practice is about shaking things up, trying something new, not about producing a perfect result.
So what did you come up with?
My Example
One of my go to supplies are brush pens. They are great for drawing in my planner, because they don’t bleed through the pages. They are water-based, so you can blend them with a wet paint brush, a bit like watercolour.
I’m mostly drawn to colouring nature scenes. Flowers, mountains, oceans, skies, trees, plants. I blame Bob Ross for this.
A while ago, I bought myself some brush pens from a company that is originally known for their graffiti spray cans. The markers I have are supposed to be the water-based equivalents of alcohol markers, which are used in a more graphic style.
Even though that’s what they are made for, I’ve been using them much like my other brush pens. Blending with water, drawing nature, etc.
Today, I received the new catalogue from the marker company in the mail, which reminded me of their graffiti roots - an art form I’ve not explored very much.
So exploring it is exactly what I did:
How cool did this turn out? I googled graffiti fonts and decorative elements for inspiration. I used the markers in a more graphic, block-colour way. I kept blending to a minimum, and where I did I just smudged the yellow marker into the green colour to get some green onto the yellow. I also used marker paper instead of watercolour paper which I normally use. And as you can see, not a single happy little tree anywhere.
Just a badass looking graffiti, done by yours truly.
As you can tell, I’m super pleased with this. It won’t be the last graffiti you’ll see from me. And it surely won’t be the last time I’ll try to shake things up.
Have a great and creative week!
Love,
Lorena
Love it! Always mix things up a little, keeps life interesting.