A Game to Get Things Rolling...

It's funny how when you finally have time for yourself, you still manage to fill it with a lot of "other" things. In spite of having the night off from work, it was still after 8:00 p.m. before I finally let myself go out to the drawing table. Then, I was really too tired to do much - just a smidge of sketching. Besides, my studio is in the garage - a little chilly in winter (even if I am in California with a space heater).

Anyway, today was different. I did have some morning stuff to do, but I managed to get out to the studio around 12:30, just after lunch, and spend a good 2 hours solid. I have to work tonight, so I have to figure in a little "rest" time and dinner prep.

Since time is precious and I can spend a great deal of it trying to decide what to do, I came up with sort of a game to help me get started. I figured it would serve as a "warm-up," but if I get into what I'm doing, then I'd just keep going. I simply wrote down about 25 different subjects such as farm animal, household furniture, buildings, etc. on different pieces of paper and threw them into a bowl. I did the same with several different materials such as charcoal, ink, watercolor, etc. I then chose one paper from each bowl - the subject I would warm-up with and the material I would have to use. I did it today for the first time and came up with "bear" and "colored pencil." (shown above)

I probably worked on it for about 30 minutes before I moved on, but it turned out to be a fun way to get the creativity flowing. I'm not sure that the bear's foreshortened leg is very accurate, but I didn't have a bear handy. When I got tired of working on it, I switched over to a project that had been a doodle, but I'm redoing it as a completed picture. I'll share that in a future post.