Wednesday WrapUp Another Sketchbook Squad

Ice cream cone wrapped in checkered napkin held up to grassy landscape in a hand with red fingernails

Welcome!

Each Wednesday check this blog for a strategy, process, or reflection for illustration with the iPad app ProCreate. This Wednesday Wrap Up, I share the challenge I’ve been participating in while I consider my goals for 2023.

The Challenge

Sarah Watts [ @wattsalot ] started a Sketchbook Squad challenge — to draw daily every day— choosing to do so in one’s own way, regarding style, medium, and time. Listen to her IG about it: Daily Draw Challenge. She works in analogy, but encourages digital as well. Prompts are by a weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

My Response

Each photo prompt presents a unique challenge for me, a self-taught and novice artist. I’ve enjoyed the challenge because I need to interpret each photo prompt with the skills I have learned so far:

Ice Cream: Style: Stylized with texture/stippling– I always need practice in stippling for shading so that was my focus
Runners: Style: Abstract Icon Style– Oh, people are still not something I can create to my satisfaction, so I attempted to create an iconic abstract style, starting with the golden lines of the runner’s stance and then filling in pattern shapes for everything else
Window: Style: color, textures, highlights, shading — a fairly easy, but multi-layered illustration to create shadows with fill; perhaps I should have tried stippling here as well
Lighthouse Style: contour drawing, colored, textured– this was so fun to illustrate, starting with the double contour lines and then filling with color and adding texture and shadow, attempting to create the light effects found in the grassy area and adding in my own sunset style
Crocus: Style: messy painterly style with Lisa Glanz Messy Paint Box Brushes– the ones for fun animals, but I like the effect so I followed that process to create the crocus.

Click the links for each post.

I’ve spent most of January with the Sketchbook Squad prompts, which has really helped me quickly choose a style and follow a learned process, remixing and adapting for the effect I want. Lots of learning, but I’ve several classes to finish– and a few pattern classes to take… So I’ll be moving on from this project to further my main goals: patterns, painterly, abstract, and fun to build up my RedBubble and Spoonflower shops, especially.

For links to mentioned artists, see Artists Resources page. I am ever thankful for their continued sharing of their artistry so others, like myself, can learn and grow.