How an A to Z framework helps with daily drawing
Accountability, motivation, inspiration, self-knowledge and growth
Some of you have been following along with my daily drawing over the past week.
These don’t go out automatically – you have to specifically sign up to them – because daily emails tend to bother a lot of people and every time I’ve sent out daily emails, I’ve lost a lot of subscribers. If you do want to receive them daily, I explained how to do so in last week’s post (which is also now the pinned post for this site).
I have been reminded how very wonderful doing an A to Z project is, for me.
Here are the seven pieces I have created so far.
Accountability
Knowing exactly what I need to draw and that I need to do it by the end of the day (or, as has happened for the most part so far, shortly past midnight!), keeps me accountable. This last week has taught me that I would really like to be able to get it done earlier in the day, rather than leaving it until the very last thing at night. Which is a useful life lesson and any daily habit you’re trying to embed.
Finding the time when you can do something best. Are you better off getting all your daily habits done first thing in the morning, before rocking up to your desk? Or are some of them suited to a particular time of day? For example, would a lunchtime walk help you get your steps more than trying to get out the door before you’ve had your first cup of tea?
This next week, I’m going to see if I can at least start them in the morning. I could see the benefit of doing sketches in the morning and laying down colour and adding bling (aka patterns, decoration; working out the background colour).
Motivation
The motivation is a combination of really wanting to do the next one and the next one, because I’m enjoying doing them, along with being motivated because I know people are following along in some way (whether here or on social media). I know that it’s probably wrong to be motivated by social media engagement (especially in the days of weird algorithm changes and the like, when you really can’t tell who is looking and when), but I am. And it helps me. I think, in addition, I really really love seeing these all collected together in one and there is definitely a motivation to create more so I can share a bunch of them in one go!
Inspiration
Finding inspiration can be hard. I have a tendency to default to certain things when I don’t have a particular plan or a folder full of sketches that I want to work up. I will almost always fall into drawing stylised florals, and often as a pattern. Or just a go-with-the-flow symmetry piece (digital or analogue). Or I will draw what’s in front of me. None of these are bad or useless exercises, but it’s really helpful to have already worked out, for the most part, what I’m going to draw.
I make sure I have, if at all possible, at least two options to draw on any one day. I think this helps me maintain some element of choice. That way I can see where I am feeling like going on that day. It might be that one of them would be easier to draw than the other. It might be that one offers more opportunity for adding decorative pattern. It might be that I’ve found some particularly fascinating reference images that I wasn’t to dig down a bit more into during the sketching phase. Having a choice therefore helps, but having already narrowed it down makes a big difference, because too much choice can be overwhelming.
Self-knowledge (or style embedding)
This is one of the most important aspects of an A to Z project, or a daily drawing project of any kind. But particularly with one like this, because you’re focusing on a specific area and aiming to draw in the same style throughout.
One of the things it has done for me on this project already is remind me of what I have loved about my hand-drawn vector style. I have really enjoyed exploring the pixel brushes over the last few months and I appreciate that I am now comfortable working in both pixel and vector, so I can offer both to future clients.
But most of these A to Zs I have done in vector (I started off in pixels on the very first one and it didn’t feel right – you can read about that on my old blog) and I think vector really helps me to look at the basic underlying shapes and helps me to simplify and stylise in my own way. And I love getting those basic shapes and colour down before allowing my decorative instinct to go wild. I find this (currently) works better in vector, though I may explore how I can bring that knowledge into the pixel work more in the next A to Z (or not – I reserve the right to decide then).
Another element that I think the pixel exploration had taken me away from was creating my own textures using mark-making. The pixel exploration has had me using others’ textures, really, in the form of brushes. So, I am happy digging back down into that and exploring the ways I can add vector textures that are mine (like the squiggles on the armchair, for example), as well as how pattern can bring texture (like the side of the chest of drawers).
And then there’s understanding what processes work best for you. Adjusting these as you go through an A to Z, or really digging down and embedding the ones that particularly work, can be wonderful.
Over these seven days, I’ve gone from starting by tracing some of the reference photos, then redrawing them a few times before settling on a sketch to go with and then laying down colour and pattern, through drawing a detailed sketch as the starting point, and drawing the vector over that, to drawing a sketch and then redrawing based on it, but not over it. I’m exploring different processes and digging into methods that I prefer.
Growth
And growth is such a benefit, too. You can (well, I can, anyway, and I imagine other illustrators will) see in those earlier A to Zs how much I grew from the start of each one to the end. Often the A is simpler and me finding my way and by Z I’ve got my process and style sorted out and I’ve added new touches throughout the 26 pieces. Already, on Day 7, I can see progress and growth and am really looking forward to how it all looks together at the end. There’s a fairly good chance I might need to dip back into the earlier ones to adjust some things and add in extra texture or decoration or take some things away, or change the colour of the background (I have already done that on the Étagère – I had made the background on the Footstool almost the same as the one on the Étagère, which looks wrong when you put them next to each other, so I have gone back in and changed that background.
So, yes, I would highly recommend an A to Z as a framework – and, actually, it doesn’t have to be daily either. You could do one letter a week and end up with two A to Zs per year. Or one letter per fortnight for one a year. And you could spend much more time on each piece. The fact that I’m doing these in an hour or two (or sometimes as little as half an hour), mean that none of them are really deep and detailed and also means it’s harder to do scenes (which definitely shapes the themes I pick). There could definitely be a benefit it in taking two weeks over each letter and making a really fully thought out and rendered piece for each one.
Incidentally, I think I’m going to mostly stop the hand-lettered headings, because they are not particularly accessible, probably not brilliant for SEO (though I have been making sure to add alt text to all of them) and they don’t work with the new table of contents that Substack has created. Oh, and they add extra time to each post/newsletter. But if you really miss them, do say. I do personally love looking at the newsletters that are full of hand-lettered headings because I love, love, love hand-lettering! So I’m not averse to bringing them back.
Have you ever done an A to Z project? Martin has been joining with this one, and using it to explore a new collage practice. And Johnson pointed me to this A to Z of Movie Deaths that he’s been working on for quite a while – that’s definitely a bigger project than my individual objects. I do wonder if it’s harder to finish if it’s not a daily (or close to daily) practice.
I might consider an inky A to Z for Inktober (with my own A to Z prompts, not their prompts – I never use their prompts), as this one will be all finished by then. Then again, that would be going against a lot of what I’ve said above about what I’ve discovered during these A to Zs, and the one A to Z I didn’t finish was an inky one.
See you next week, when hopefully I will have actually sent out those emails I said I would send out and can share with you what I sent (or some of it – I realised that one of the things I’m going to include when I email art directors who publish foodie stuff is the mushroom Veg Letter from last week, and it wouldn’t be fair to the paid subscribers to share that at full size with all of you).
Oh, and, if you missed the earlier post where I talked about why I wanted to do another A to Z, you can read it here. (I actually spent about an hour almost writing the exact same things I’d written there this morning and then realised I had already written it all!)
Sharing some old work
Am very busy this week and will probably be pretty busy next week, too. But also have a scheduled, unmovable trip to London with three quarters of the family for a day and a half, while the other quarter of the family celebrates a special birthday with her friends. So, I’ve been working a lot this weekend to try to get a deadline out of the way and hope…
Also, a reminder that, as well as daily drawings, I’ve been posting daily words about Everyday Life (that you can click into and read at any point, or you can choose to subscribe)
If you haven’t yet subscribed yet to Illustrated Life, why not do so now? And consider a paid subscription if you want to get some lovely illustrated goodies in the post, or just support my writing, which takes a good few hours each week.
See you next week for more Illustrated Life!
And don’t forget to check out The Illustrated Plant Kitchen too, for weekly foodie writing and illustrations every Wednesday. This week is illustrated recipe week (for paid subscribers) and I may do a little update, before the paywall, on whether or not the new cooker has actually arrived.
“I need to do it by the end of the day (or, as has happened for the most part so far, shortly past midnight!)” I relate to that SO MUCH!!
I don’t think using the people following the project as a way to keep you accountable is being motivated by social media likes’ - it’s more being motivated by human connection. I was steadiest at going to the gym when I was going with a friend, because I never wanted to let her down. That’s very effective.
And I adore your hand lettered headings, though I understand they can pose challenges to digital readability.