Toy Elephant, Digital Drawing, Brushes App, 2015

Digital Drawing Loss and Frustration

In 2015, I went back to old-fashioned sketching with pencil on paper after losing a digital drawing on the Brushes App. I had been trying out digital drawing and painting on my iPad with the Brushes App. This was fun until a drawing I worked on for over an hour didn't save. Somehow I lost the newer version of the sketch and only have an earlier draft of this elephant toy drawing. The earlier version is shown above.

This experience of losing my iPad drawing reminded me of writing my first novel on an Apple 2C that kept crashing and so I'd lose the most recent work. The button combinations for saving the novel and shutting down the computer were very similar. I kept confusing them and losing the newest writing. So I resorted to printing out copies of the novel draft, along with obsessively saving after writing only a few lines.

This was wasteful, both in time and in paper resources. Computers have come a long way since that time in the 1980's! As have tools for drawing and painting. Nevertheless, I still managed to lose a drawing that I worked on for over an hour! Big digital drawing fail.

Good, Old-Fashioned Pencil on Paper Drawing

Once I returned back to old-fashioned sketching on paper, I alternated drawing with charcoal and pencil. Each day, I set a timer and focusing on drawing a toy elephant. Each day presented a new challenge as I change the elephant's position and attempt to capture the new lines and shadows. Drawing this toy elephant proved to be both inspiring and motivating in many ways. It started me on my path to a 6 month daily drawing project.

Toy Elephant Drawing February 18, 9″ x 12″, 2015

Daily Drawings of the Toy Elephant

While I draw, I get ideas for many ideas for art projects, blog posts, and artwork series. The practice of drawing each day seems to stimulate more creativity for making art and writing. I made many black and white drawings of the same toy elephant in 2015 because of daily drawing. I was inspired to draw the same object every day in a different way and in a new position.

Maybe I'll work up the nerve to try daily digital drawing on my iPad again in the future.  Perhaps the misstep with the lost digital sketch was because of a bug with the Brushes App that will be corrected. Or (more likely) I somehow messed up while using the App. I'm sure that digital technology for drawing and painting will only get better and easier to use.

I was feeling motivated and inspired to work on old-fashioned drawings using pencil on paper. The daily drawing led me to make a series of colourful paintings of the same toy elephant.