Even when I’m happy with my skills-so-far I always want more practice. The nice thing about this month’s art challenge is it’s all animals.

I decided to kind-of imitate another artist’s take from last year or the year before. I can’t find the link! Or her name! Argh! Karen something maybe? Kathy something? She did ink animals with a watercolor wash behind them. (I’ll comment it here and elsewhere if I can track this down or if one of you knows.) My plan was “stick with pencil, and I might have sketchy bits behind them in the wash.”  

I’ve drawn about half of the prompts so far  (you’ll see! Stay tuned!), and did not, in fact, stick entirely with my art plan. I am sure you are as surprised as I am.

On the other hand, I’m getting into this challenge as “this is PRACTICE and I can try WHATEVER when I’m doing it and mess-ups are good!” This is really great! So some so far have turned out as I hoped, others totally not, and some surprised me in different ways and I am enjoying looking up animals and putting down shading and learning things.

Not to get long-winded or anything (because I would never do that), here’s what I’ve learned or re-learned so far:

* I like drawing animals

* Goats are harder than foxes

* iPhone photography and me are still not a successful combination (my space is too messy right now to get out the scanner effectively, so that’s another project for the rest of July)

* good watercolor paper is So Much Better but I might as well keep practicing on the not-so-good-stuff but a treat is In My Future (I can see the Arches coldpress from here!) 

* I enjoy using silly capitalization

* it is really good to take a day off from trying to do all the jobs and all the chores, even if the weather is beautiful

* I am not sure of the color combos working for anyone but me because my eyes and glasses are so funky but hey

* I like drawing while having video chats with far-away (and not so faraway) friends and should do that more too. 

I hope you enjoy this process too. I’ll post my favorites so far here first, probably. Since there could be as many as 31 (but probably not), I may wind up posting some over to Instagram instead. (I don’t feel that’s as inbox-cluttery, more like a “go-swimming-in-pictures-when-you-want” rather then “they’ve-invited-me-in-be-courteous!”)

Thank you everyone for making me feel encouraged and adventurous.