Drawing the same teapot for thirty days
September 28
The idea was simple: one small sketch of the same old teapot every morning, before coffee. By day ten I stopped seeing a teapot and started seeing the shape of light on a curved surface. By day twenty the drawings got looser and, oddly, more accurate.
The lesson I keep relearning is that repetition is not boring if you let the subject change you instead of the other way around.
Cheap paper, honest lines
September 9
I switched from my good sketchbook to a stack of plain printer paper for a month. Without the pressure of a precious page, I drew faster and threw away more. Fewer careful drawings, more useful mistakes.
Watercolour in a park, take three
August 21
Wind, ants, and a sky that changed every four minutes. Two of the three paintings went straight into the bin, but the third has a tree I am still quietly proud of.