so I just finished my latest sketchbook. Filling the whole thing took me a year and a half, by far the longest time yet (I used to fill them in under 6 months). Part of this is I’ve gradually started filling each page with more stuff, but the other half of it is I just… haven’t been drawing as much.

I feel kind of bad about it, but I guess its to be expected since I did a looot of my doodling during lectures, and now my studios outnumber them.

And on an even more distressing note, I feel like I haven’t improved noticeably since the beginning of my last sketchbook (so like, mid 2010). And I know what it is: I’ve become complacent. I don’t actively work towards improving beyond just drawing stuff. I draw when I watch TV, I draw during lectures, but I don’t sit down and say “okay, today I’m practicing x” and look up refs etc. I know I should but honestly I rarely have any motivation to, at least not for doodles. And its hurting me artistically.

In high school it didn’t matter because I was forced to do this kind of stuff during art class, but UMBC has no illustration courses besides drawing 1 and 2 (and my AP credits got me out of drawing 1). So I haven’t done life studies, still lives, etc. in 2.5 years. And you can tell by my stagnant art.

The upside is my design skills HAVE improved, and drastically. I really enjoy design, and honestly my drawing skills are more than sufficient for most of my design work (if it involves illustration at all, its usually just a silhouette or limited color palette, never a full blown digital painting). I’ve never once questioned my choice of major, and honestly looking at it now, illustration seems limiting in comparison.

I guess I just feel like illustration took a back seat to design, which is completely understandable, but still a little sad. Like the end of an era or something, haha…