night sketch - blue jays - saturday night reflection

Just playing around with some sketches. It's great to loosen up the hands and doing sketches that aren't perfect and having fun. I went to a schoolism workshop in march 2015, I absolutely loved it, and one of the presenters had a really good point, don't just fill up one sketchbook a year, fill up several. Keep drawing, keep at it, sketch everything and anything, gives you experience and you develop more as an artist. Nothing needs to be perfect.

I wish, looking back at my highschool years, I was told this, instead I listened to an artist who was my best friend at the time tell me I wasn't very good (I thought he was extremely talented and so did he). This made me nervous to sketch and come up with ideas. I wanted to be perfect at it. I wouldn't show work until I thought it was done, people would look at my work and I would feel panic sink in, were they judging me. It made me nervous and hurt me from developing my own style, or progressing in the art field for so long. Never let anyone tell you you aren't good. I use Leonardo daVinci as a reminder of that, I absolutely love seeing the sketches and thought process he has in his sketch books, he was constantly learning. If you read about him you'll discover that he had many flaws, many areas that he got wrong or was continuing to work out. So many artists show only finished pieces that we think of them as better then us, or unachievable. We never see what is behind the scenes. From doodles, notes, to the blank page (or riped up page) and the artist walking away, and eventually to that eureka moment where you zone out and become so engrossed in your work that you look back at and said how did I create this?

To all of us out there, don't judge others, inspire others, encourage growth, encourage failure, since many failures can lead to something great, lead to something that we never thought was possible.