Make Your Own Crappy Drawings
No drawing skills required
On Sunday, we talked about celebrating all of our small wins. I shared with you my daily crappy drawing practice and that I refer to them as “crappy” to remove any expection of perfection. There’s no place for fussiness or preciousness. I dive straight into these quick less-than-5-minute drawings with a marker. No pencil sketching first. I’m most likely doing it while laying in bed, resting on my drawing arm. Not ideal conditions for a masterpiece. And I’m not looking to make masterpieces here.
This is my setup.
To start, I take a few minutes to prep my pages with sticky notes. Post-It doesn’t make 4x4 inch notes, so I have to either buy bigger ones and cut them to size, use lined ones, or use an off brand. I go with off brand. Yes, I know 3x3 are readily available in all of the colors, but that size is too small. It might work for you.
I use these guys. There are 8 different colors in the package, for a total of 400 sheets for $6.99. A pretty good deal and you have more than a year’s worth.
I lay four on the front and back of each page of letter sized paper. I’ll set up maybe 10 or 15 sheets, enough to get me through a couple of months. Then I pop them on a clipboard. Their own dedicated clipboard, no sharing with crossword puzzles or tax forms.
The clipboard stays on my bedside table with a simple black marker.
Here’s another option, it’s a little less fussy.
Make a quick, crappy little calendar drawing. Use a calendar you have. Pop it on a clipboard and gather some pens or markers.
At the bottom of this post is a blank calendar for you to download and print.
The key is to remove barriers to your success.
Get into a system with your daily drawing. Do it after dinner, or before you brush your teeth. Do it with your kid. Do it on your phone’s basic drawing app. Don’t try to make anything perfect. Just make the thing. Stick figures are your bestie.
Don’t be shy about looking up objects on your phone. You don’t have to draw a roast chicken from memory, give yourself some help.
And if you skip a day or two: compassion. We’re all about taking the sucky edge off of life, not getting down on ourselves.
I am very particular about my pens. You might not be. You do you, boo.
Kuretake Fude: good for thin and thick lines and filling in. I don’t recommend the extra fine, it has a tendency to leave big ink blobs. This pen is black on the outside. I like the grey one for light shading.
Kuretake Bimoji fude. This one is great for writing/lettering, with a nice solid tip. There are others in this line that have brush tips, which are not great for legible writing or fine lines.
Tombow: These are water-based dual tip markers that come in heaps of colors. One side has a nice bushy brush, and the other a fine tip. You can buy them singly in art supply stores or in packages of 6,8, or 10. I haven’t tried any off-brand versions.
Gel pens: I’ve tried heaps of different brands. Gelly Rolls are hands down the best. Moonlight is an opaque ink. Stardust is a beautiful glitter ink. Metallic is, well, metallic.
Don’t be afraid to share your drawings or your calender with me. Just respond to this or any of my newsletters. I’m overjoyed to see what you can create.
Thanks for the calendar download! Surprisingly hard to find nice, blank ones. 😊