Improbably Possible

Well it's been another long gap between posts and in looking at the dates there seems to be something about summer that makes me want to start writing haha. I think it might be that I start a lot of "Summer" projects. The days are longer, it's warm in the Pacific Northwest, it's beautiful outside and I get motivated to do something. This got me thinking about the importance of personal work and personal projects. I believe they are important because as artists these are opportunities to more easily process and develop. There are many types of projects that could fall into this realm. I like to break up projects into these three categories: DEVELOPMENT - A project designed around an area I'm wanting to improve in artistically (i.e. sketching faster, cartoony animation, drawing hands, etc.) THERAPEUTIC - A project that allows me to process my thoughts and emotions through my artwork EXPLORATION - An open project often focused  on having fun or trying out a ne...

Now that so much work can be created digitally there seems to be a little resistance to the idea of developing an ability to sketch on paper. What I hear most often is that people aren't good at it, it's a waste of time, and/or I like to figure it out on the computer. As someone that grew up thinking I was terrible at drawing but liked to do it, and now finalize most of my work on the computer I thought I would share my thoughts about these statements to help explain why I continue to sketch. "I'm Not Good At It" I completely understand this one because I said this to myself when I thought of being an artist in grade school. First I would ask what are you not good at. Are you not good at quickly roughing out some of your ideas, or are you unhappy with the quality of the sketch when it is finished? If it is the latter I would encourage you to learn to let it go. It is very difficult to do so, especially with Twitter, Instagram, etc. and everyone posting there ...