Doing your own 365 One Sketch A Day Challenge - a few tips

It’s not impossible that you may be thinking about embarking on our own 365 day one sketch a day challenge. If you are, then here’s my advice and tips, based on my own. 

·       Set out your round rules before you start. Obviously the big one is that you have to make at least one completed sketch every consecutive day of the year. But then there are other things to be considered. Does it have to be in a particular medium? Does it have to be from life or can you use a photographic reference? For me I allowed as broad an interpretation as possible, probably as a recognition that the challenge is hard enough as it is without narrowing the terms of your challenge.

·       Decide whether you are going to post your pictures online. Obviously I’m going to say that I think this is a good idea because I did it. But there may come times when you’ll need all the help you can get with motivation to complete your challenge, and having the need to post something online can help with this.

·       Think seriously about what you’re going to do on those days when you either can’t find the motivation, or the time to make the kind of sketch you’d like to make. As the great John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” You might want to make sure that you always carry an emergency pen/pencil and piece of paper with you in case you’re stuck somewhere on business or whatever. Several of my sketches were made with a work biro on whatever scrap of paper I could find. On days such as this you have to get in the habit of actively looking for that ten minute window when you can make a sketch.

You might also want to think about what the simplest and quickest sketch you could make if all else fails would be like. I always told myself that if I had to I would allow myself to make a stick man sketch one day (only 1 day mind you). Thankfully I never had to, but if it had made the difference between keeping up the challenge, and failing on one day I would have done it.

One thing I didn’t do which might actually be helpful to you is to compile some prompts – maybe a couple of dozen, for you to use on days when inspiration fails.

·       Seriously consider joining a sketching group on Facebook. Sketching Every Day, which I joined in late July, provided me with a daily prompt (which I didn’t always follow, but was a great source of inspiration for sketches), another forum for displaying the sketches, and a source of encouragement and support.

·       There’s nothing intrinsically wrong about sticking with what you know and what you’re comfortable with. However you might like to think about using your challenge as an opportunity to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and try media that you’re not comfortable with, or which are totally new to you. I love using an ink sketching pen, and I think that it’s the medium I work best in. However I also produced sketches during the challenge using graphite pencil, biro, direct watercolour, acrylic, watercolour pencils and coloured pencils.

·       Keep an eye out for opportunities to tie your challenge into other challenges. The 30 day direct watercolour challenge took care of the month of June, for example, and Inktober took care of all bar a couple of days of October.

·       A year is a daunting amount of time. So although your overall goal is reach a year, do it by setting yourself medium term, and even short term targets. Start off by seeing if you can manage 7 days, just one week. When you’ve completed that, then set a new target of a fortnight. Then stretch it to a month. Once you’ve done a whole month, then you’re already 1/12 of the way there. Once you get to 37 days you’ve completed more than a tenth. Keep breaking it down into short achievable targets and you’ll hopefully find this helps you stay focused.

·       Don’t throw away the sketches you make. You might not love all of them, but each one represents a step on your journey and has its own value for that if for nothing else.

One Sketch 365) (Monday 25th March) Morocco Mole - ONE YEAR - CHALLENGE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED

Morocco's a short sighted mole
Who'll rarely be found in a hole
I'm really quite sorry
He's like Peter Lorre
A rather ridiculous soul.

You'll have to take my word for it that I actually did make this sketch a week ago on Monday - but I promise you that I did. So why haven't I posted it? Well, because of inertia really. Rather than feeling as if a weight had been lifted from me on completing my one sketch challenge, suddenly not having it to do any more saw me filled with lethargy. It wasn't a question of how long would I keep going once the year was up. In fact I didn't make another sketch for 6 days, until the Llandaff sketch crawl with the sketchers group.

I've got my thoughts together now, and I will post them shortly.

One Sketch 362) Friday 22nd March - HMS Victory in Dry Dock

Sleep sound, oak warrior
Your day is done
But your twilight
Is magnificent

Not sure why I made a sketch of HMS Victory in dry dock in Portsmouth Harbour. Well, you gotta sketch something, I suppose.

One Sketch 360) Weds 20th March - Burghers of Calais

In History, it seems, they have gone down
They sacrificed themselves to save their town.

These are Rodin's sculpture of the Burghers of Calais, which resides by the Houses of Parliament. The burghers of Calais were the leading citizens who surrendered themselves to King Edward III of England, so that he would spare the town of Calais from destruction.

One Sketch 358) Monday 18th - Selfie

I'm not an oil painting

That is true

But decades worth of teaching

Would do the same to you

What it says on the tin - Monday's prompt on Sketching Every Day was a self portrait.

One Sketch 357) (only 8 left to go) Guinness Poster

I'm not fond of bitter, cider
lager, Guinness too
The evening that I downed three pints
I ended on the loo

- shouting downstairs to ask my mother to put some toilet paper in the fridge for me, as I recall. Well that was decades ago, and for all I know it might well have been the ruby murray that I ate afterwards. Still, I've never touched a drop of Guinness since. Well, I don't drink alcohol at all now - that's not from a moral standpoint or anything like that, I just don't like it very much, and I'm to old to do something I don't want to just to make other people happy.

So coming to this, it's a copy of an old Guinness poster. I'd lay odds that they wouldn't be able to make claims like this about the product now, although I don't know, since I'm told that Irish stout is actually a good source of iron. Whatever, the prompt in today's Sketching Every Day was Slainte - and being the Gaelic for good health/cheers etc. Guinness just seemed to suggest itself to me.

One Sketch 356) Featured artist Germaine Arnaktauyok

I'll tell you, if truth must be told
I really have never been sold
On the idea to go
And live in the snow
I never would cope with the cold.

Another Sketching Every Day prompt, this is a copy of part of a work by Inuit artist Germaine Arnatauyok.

One Sketch 355) Statue of Hans Christian Anderson

Hans Anderson would often write
Of mermaids, and of a duck
He didn't look like Danny Kaye
I couldn't give a hoot.

Now that's just rude, isn't it. Sorry, I think I'm getting a little demob happy - just 10 more days to go to complete the year. Today's prompt in Sketching Every Day was a choice of photo prompts - this one is based on a photo of a statue of famous Dane Hans Christian Anderson (and whenever I hear that name I seem to think of Danny Kaye singing it).

One Sketch 354) Madam Butterfly

Pinkerton
What a rotten guy
Left poor Madam M
High and dry.

Today is National Butterfly day - and I absolutely love butterflies. But the thing is they're too important for me to just dash off a quick sketch, so I did this human butterfly insetad.

One Sketch 353 (Weds 13th March) E.H. Shepard's Mr. Toad

What a fool was Mr. Toad!
So K. Grahame's book once showed

Featured artist yesterday on Sketching Every Day was E.H. Shepard I was tempted to do Winnie the Pooh, but in the end plumped for Mr. Toad. Exceptionally busy all day yesterday, but managed to grab 10 minutes with biro and lined paper to produce this.

One Sketch 350) (Sunday 10th March) No 2 Thames St. Windsor.

Ghosts tiptoe
Needle and tape measure poised
Between the bags of
Cash

This is a little self indulgent. This building, number 2 Thames Street in Windsor, used to belong to my mother's family. Well, strictly speaking, my mother's mother's family, the Cobdens. In the early decades of the 19th century a man called Richard Hayllar Cobden set up his tailors business in these premises, probably with his brother Benjamin, who would open premises in nearby Eton. Another brother, my ancestor Thomas Hayllar Cobden worked as a carpenter in the town. Richard took on Thomas Hayllar Cobden's son, Thomas Richard Cobden as his apprentice. In 1857 he made Thomas Richard a partner in the business, and Thomas went on to run the business. My great, great grandfather, Richard Edward Dawe Cobden, was Thomas' second son, and by all accounts a bit of a rogue. He may have opened a branch in Hammersmith, certainly that's where his family were living in the 1890s. As for Cobdens Ltd. in Thames Street, that eventually passed on to Richard Edward's younger brother Charles Cobden. He died in 1927, and left behind two daughters. They sold the business and the premises to Lloyds Bank, and the building is still a branch of Lloyds bank today.

One Sketch 349) Saturday 9th March - Featured artist Jessica Durrant

Admire me
Like I admire
Myself

Not a lot more to say about this one, it's based on an original picture by artist Jessica Durrant.

One Sketch 347) Zygon

Don't say that I'm being too hasty
To say that a zygon is nasty
They make some folk tremble
Although they resemble
A large overbaked Cornish pasty.

The prompt for Sketching Every Day was mythical creature. Well, this maybe isn't mythical but it's fictional and that's close enough for me. I've been a huge Doctor Who fan for decades - in fact I've even written books about the TV show ( available on your kindle now.)

One Sketch 346) (Weds 6th March) T Bana (modern type) at Stockholm City/T. Centralen

T is for tunnels
And bana means bana.


Yes, it's Stockholm once again. This was based on a photograph I took in Stockholm City underground station in Stockholm. The T Bana is the Stockholm Metro, and it's pretty good, when all is said and done.

One Sketch 345) Pendeltag at Alvsjo

Swedish choo choo
One the track
Took me into town
and back.

Now that rhyme really is plumbing the depths isn't it. This is a sketch of a pendeltag - commuter train - at Alvsjo Station. This was my stop - 3 away from Stockholm city - last week when I was staying in Stockholm. These Pendeltags are great. Their layout and interior is very much that of a metro - or indeed a modern Bombardier tram. They whisk you into the city in about 10 minutes flat and are very frequent. What's not to like?

One Sketch 344) (Monday 4th March) Featured artist Josef Lada

The officer's a frightful bore
There's worse things, though
When you're at war.

Featured artist on today's prompt was Josef Lada. This is a copy of one of his illustrations.

One Sketch 343) Marine Iguana

My blood runs cold
Even when I bask on
the banks of
frozen fire.
But I can still move
Torpedo sharp
Through the colder depths
Of the sea
Until, triumphant
I explode onto the rocks
To warm.

The prompt on Sketching Every Day today was reptile. Now, I'm not really keeping count, but I'm pretty sure I've already done two reptiles since I started one sketch a day, those being the Komodo dragon (my favourite reptile) and a crocodile. So, not wanting to repeat myself I picked this, my second favourite reptile, the Galapagos marine iguana.

I first saw marine iguanas on a David Attenborough documentary. The Galapagos islands are one of those places I will probably never visit, but I'd love to - I'm very fond of Giant Tortoises as well.

I think It's probably about time to start counting down in days now, and so here we go - 22 days to go.

One Sketch 341) Queen Christina of Sweden

Christina the Queen was a lass
At whom one would not make a pass
She ruled as a king
But then, here's the thing
She gave it all up for the Mass.

Okay, the prompt today on Sketching Every Day was Famous Women from History. Now, I already knew a bit about Queen Christina of Sweden, but I learned quite a bit more about here while I was in Stockholm. Giving you the edited highlights version, she was the only surviving child of King Gustavus II Adolphus the Great, and he made it clear that he wanted her to succeed him. He had her educated exactly the same way that he would have had a son educated. She became queen (although she was actually given the title of king) when her father was killed in battle when she was 14. As she became older, Christina became more and more interested in Catholicism, which was not really what 17th century Lutheran Sweden was looking for in a monarch, and in the end she abdicated so that she could convert.

Just as a point I want to note - we are now in March, dearly beloved, and by the end of the month I will have completed my one sketch a day challenge. Woa.

One Sketch 338) (Tuesday 26th February) Riddarholmen Island Stockholm - The Vasa

Stockholm
City of Islands
And Bridges
And Ice.

Yes, even though I was lucky enough to visit Stockholm at the end of February in a little window of mild weather, it was still noticeable just how much ice there is in the sea. I made this sitting opposite the small Riddarholmen island - Stockholm actually spreads over no fewer than 14 islands. They do a very good line in spires in Stockholm, and the one in this is the Riddarholmkirke - in which you can find the tomb of Gustavus Adolphus. He was the one whom the warship the Vasa was built for (see below.)

Basically the king had it built for his ongoing war with Poland. It was made too tall, and too narrow, with not enough ballast, and it sank in Stockholm harbour on it's maiden voyage. Efforts to salvage it were unsuccessful, until it was rediscovered in the late `1950s, and salvaged in 1961. It now lives in its own museum, and over 90% of the ship is original. It is quite simply possibly the most breathtaking museum exhibit I have ever seen.

One Sketch 337) (Monday 25th Feb) Stockholm Tram

Sweden's capital
Is where I am
Can't see me here?
I'm on the tram

Ouch. That's bloody awful. On Monday I flew to Stockholm early doors, and flew back late on Thursday. Yes, I know, this was my 4th European trip since I started my one sketch a day challenge - but rest assured I have no plans to go on another before the challenge to make one sketch a day every day for a year is up. Now, you know me well enough by now. One of my priorities when I go to a new city is to find out if they have trams, and if so, to use them. I will be honest, I only found one tram route right in the middle of Stockholm - the number 7, but it's a good 'un, and I made sure that I rode it before even thinking about checking in at my hotel.