Caro Lion
t n i 30 minutes r p s milestones A Tour of the Old World
In 2020, after 6 months of being displaced and unable to make future plans, I started sketch sprints. This was a hour long session via zoom where we drew 2 quick still lifes and a long one, once a week. It was a productive social online hour and was a helpful salve in a period of anxiety, restrictions and insecurity. Picking up a pencil first, I quickly moved on to steal my children's crayons and paint. Once my sketch book was filled, I went out to buy paint, paper and brushes. It has been liberating: from many things. I now have a stack of marks on paper and I share here ones over the past 18 months. Each sketch is about 30 minutes or less. An hour a week to prioritise ones own creative time and to make it accountable by doing it with others. The idea is so easy that the original sketch sprint has had babies and there are currently 4 that I know of running: 3 weekly, one monthly. If you want to join in, let me know! Not only the productivity, but the social connection has made it a very valuable way to spend time and I think I got better at sketching.
2020 OCT 4 Potatoes in pencil. Decades since I had sat down to draw. I had stopped because I could not see the point of wasting resources for mediocre outcomes. Another excuse (perhaps a common one used not to persist) was that other people can do it better than me. Why bother? Overcoming this mental hurdle was my first milestone. Sketching is a craft. The more you do it, the better you get.
2020 NOV 9 Pumpkin in crayon and watercolour. The ah ha! moment when I remembered I can save a dismal crayon attempt by giving it the magic of water vs oil. In this case, the Pental paints that Japanese elementary school children are equipped with vs cray pas. This joy with paint made me brave enough to buy a basic acrylic set. A big step towards believing in what I might create.
2020 DEC 18 Lunch in Hamburg, craypas and watercolour. It was at this point, after an evening sketch sprint began and a lady had set up a beautifully detailed still life, that I realised that some sketches were not too bad. Looking back, I think how transformative this idea was. I started taking photos of the sketches I had done and kept them online where I could see them in one place, neatly cropped. This method was helpful in seeing my sketches rather than just doing them and more importantly, seeing progress. I began looking at my work more critically.
2020 DEC 18 Pomegranates, acrylic. It took me a while to paint with acrylics as it was easier and cleaner to pick up crayons, particularly as I was working on the dining table and had to clean up quickly for meals. However, once I started using old flattened milk cartons as a palette, they became easier to use and mix. Painting helped me to loosen up the urge to make something accurately. This was a milestone because I had finally allowed myself to return to a medium I had favoured in high school and had thought I did not have the resources to play with since.
2021 MARCH 1 The biggest milestone yet was sharing the sketches. I shared my padlet link on my facebook page. It feels like walking down the street naked when putting work out there. I don’t have a thick skin. This was a big step toward owning the things I make. I also stopped drawing on both sides of the sketch paper. While I had off days, turning up to the sketch sprints and putting colour to paper, no matter how awful I felt, would calm me down. Regardless of the responses, I kept producing, which would then take off on a different tangent outside that hour. I started posting portraits on instagram. These were more time intensive and different to the sketch sprints which are fleeting scribbles. In whatever form, sharing creations still remains the biggest step forward yet. Leap, and the net will appear. Julia Cameron
2021 JUNE 14 During a particularly flat period, lacking colour (despite having bought new creamy crayons, and feeling unsuccessful with paint) one of the sketch sprint ladies pointed her camera at her view and unenthusiastically, I pencilled houses. This was a milestone because what I would never have chosen to draw, propelled me into the next couple of months of carving and painting house images. This is one of the beauties of the sketch sprints. A view into others aesthetics and stepping outside comfort zones.
2021 OCT 21 I drew something I loved. It had magic in it while I was drawing it and after. I posted it on instagram with a few other floral sketches that I had accumulated by that time. Reviewing the post, I felt it had been cropped oddly so took it off, unaware it had also gone onto facebook (these mysteries!) where it remained, I discovered later, to a very encouraging response. I was getting the hang of the creamy crayons and predominantly used them on tinted paper from that time onwards. But it was not the technique. It was the feeling while I drew. We had at last, after 18 months, been given the green light to return to our pre covid home and were to leave in a few days. Looking back, it is the pictures I have drawn when I feel good that work better. It doesn’t matter to me anymore if I draw a good picture or not, but it is a nice surprise when one appears on the paper.
Seeing touches of grandeur all around the city
Experiencing cobblestone streets and small cafés
SKETCH SPRINTS Over the past 18 months, the should I be doing this? progressed to I like doing this and then into I like what I am doing, why didn't I do it sooner? Dedicating time to practise, strengthens a skill. Occasionally, out of the mire of mediocrity, something nice appears. More often than not, the picture will remind me of the funny stories we shared while sketching. You only need 2 people to start a sketch sprint. Why not try it?
Octber 2020
May 2022
