So Where Is the Art?

So here's the deal. You may recall that I made many brave noises a few months back about doing a month-long art challenge every month for the rest of the year. I made spreadsheets, which is how you can tell it's serious. I intimated that I would be posting lots of art from these drawing challenges.

Well.

Obviously, that is not quite how it has gone.

I drew five monsters in ink in February, none of which have been posted online (I have them scanned, but I'm trying to find time to do something special with them before I share them).

I drew sixteen sketches related to Beyond Porch & Portal. I posted a handful of these on this blog, but a decent number are sitting on my hard drive waiting to be formatted. I wonder if I could make a little sketch book out of them, but that's not happening until AFTER I figure out the angel zine I want to do as a warmup for the zine I REALLY want to do that has expanded unpleasantly.

I drew five art exercises in April, a few of which I photographed and shared on Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook.

What I have realized is that I am so rusty that prompts are not enough. I thought that not knowing what to draw was paralyzing me. However, the fact that I am turning out Day Job doodles on post it notes every time Outlook freezes or my work computer runs patch updates suggests that there's something else here. Some anxiety, maybe, that's holding me back from what I perceive as Real Drawing.

So I am going to go all the way back to foundations. I've decided to use the videos at (WARNING NUDE FIGURE REFERENCES) Croquis Cafe, doing a session every day if I can. This will, of course, improve my technical skills--but more importantly it will get me back into not being scared of sketchbooks.

Unfortunately, this means I won't have a lot to show, at least for a while. However, I think it'll be worth it in the long run. I'll try to get some of what I've already made formatted, and meanwhile--bear with me, eh? One limping man to another, to paraphrase Salinger.