A Month of Daily Drawings
Summer's the perfect time to create a visual book of days.
Hello creative friends near and far. I’m so happy you’re here.
And I’m so happy to be back! Did you look closely at a person last week? Talk to a stranger? Draw them? If not, it’s never too late—no expiration date on drawing strangers! If you missed my dispatch from the National Gallery of Art last Sunday featuring the ongoing public art project DrawTogether Strangers, check it out. Then grab a pen and channel the power of drawing, looking, loving, and laughing. The four L’s, if you squint.
Fun news for the month ahead:
Summer flies by, a blur of sunscreen and sandy back seats. One way to slow down a little and appreciate every day is drawing. Not a big drawing. A little drawing. But do it every day.
You’ve heard me talk about how drawing every day grounds me, whether I’m in a new place or trying to stave off the grumps. Summer is a great time to practice doing just that. (And, for our Southern Hemisphere friends, so is winter!)
This month I am inviting you all to draw together with me EVERY DAY. It can be ten minutes a day, or even just five. Three will do! A quickie with coffee or tea. Whatever works. What matters is documenting our days every day.
Book of drawing days
As I thought about creating (or re-engaging with) a daily drawing ritual, I thought of A Calendar of Wisdom, Leo Tolstoy’s version of a Book of Days. For each day of the year, Tolstoy selected different quotations and pieces of wisdom. He viewed it as his most valuable work and expected to reread it every day for his own spiritual uplift. He hoped readers would feel the same. Today’s highlighted theme:
We are separate beings, it seems, but in our inner life we are closely connected with all living things.
Love that. And love that for us. Bringing more awareness to that connection is a big part of what we are doing here at DrawTogether and the GUT.
What would a Book of Days look like for drawing? How can we create something like this that helps us ground ourselves in the moment, while also exploring a theme?
So let’s try a….
Drawing Book of Days:
We’re going to do a series of four weeks, with a different theme each week. Here’s how:
In your sketchbook, create spaces for drawing. We are going to do this for 28 days, so you can put 28 on one page, or 4 on each page, or 1 per page. They can be the size of a postage stamp or take up all the space. But create your frames today for the rest of the month.
I AM GOING TO KEEP MINE EXTRA DOABLE.
You can write the days (1-28) in there, or the dates if you like, a la Tolstoy.
Every day you will fill in one of your squares with a drawing. Each week we will switch up the theme. If you want to write a little note to accompany your drawing, you can do that too.
Decide what time of day you are going to do your drawing and try to stick with it. It’s hard to do the same thing every day but do your best to build the habit.
At the end of the month, we’ll look back at our drawings and remember where we were and how we felt each day. A great way to get in our daily drawings AND be present with the summer so it doesn’t just scream by.
High five.
