What Does One Year of Drawing Practice Look Like?

This blog post will be a running tally of a year worth of trying to improve my digital illustration. I use an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil and the Procreate ap. The ap tracks time and strokes made on the piece and I am dating them with the day I shared the finished image publicly.

January Totals:

5 images

19 hours 24 minutes

26,748 strokes

This month I really focused on trying to get better with shading and highlights to make images appear more realistic and have more depth.

January 1, 2020 | 4 hours 31 minutes | 7,092 strokes

January 3, 2020 | 3 hours 52 minutes | 6206 strokes

January 15, 2020 | 1 hour 48 minutes | 3250 strokes

January 24, 2020 | 2 hours 42 minutes | 3743 strokes

January 28, 2020 | 6 hours 31 minutes | 6,457 strokes

February Totals:

3 images

13 hours 55 minutes

8,597 strokes

This month I was really focused on my book and getting it ready for Beta readers. Not as much drawing actually happened as I would have liked.

February 2, 2020 | 4 Hours 27 minutes | 2,483 strokes

February 11, 2020 | 5 hours 25 minutes | 2,771 strokes

February 17, 2020 | 4 hours 3 minutes | 3,339 strokes

March Totals:

2 images

10 hours 55 minutes

9,899 strokes

Not much drawing happened this month outside of small sketches for my book. But I did take part in Katnip’s drawing challenge and drew Octavia Spenser from Self Made. Such an amazing mini series!