Today I completed 31 days of daily drawing with the help of the Daily Drawing Challenge: Tracing Shadows course offered by Creative Bug. I feel fortunate to have stumbled upon this endeavor and found this creative outlet and community. As the end of the school year wraps up, it is easy to get wrapped up in “busy” and lose oneself. Instead, I feel like I found myself in sketchbooks, watercolors, brushes, and other mediums. Creating has become my daily meditation practice that I look forward to each day. I look forward to the anticipation of what and how I will create something new. Each brush stroke and line drawing is an opportunity to learn something. There are no mistakes just opportunities. For example, in today’s drawing, after completing a number of different shadow drawings, I chose to paint three of the flowers. Each flower looks radically different. Why? Because I tried something, got feedback, and tried something different. (I don’t recommend painting over watercolor pens. It works much better to use the water color pen over paint.) 

As we move into the final days of school, that’s what I wish for our classrooms, teachers, and students. The opportunity to create, try something new, get feedback, apply and repeat. Thirty-one days of daily drawing using mediums and techniques that were previously foreign to me has only solidified the importance of taking risks. Sometimes risks will be with bold brush strokes and sometimes they will be done with a 0.1 sketch pen. 

Another challenge begins tomorrow for the month of June. This time it’s 30 days of painting. You can follow my creative journey so far on Instagram.