Draw a Little Every Day: Days 3 to 10

It's interesting how these daily challenges pile up on one another. I had also signed up to do the 21-day Yoga Challenge at yogajournal.com, but I'm so far behind on that that is seems like that one is a total failure... at least for now.

In the meantime, I've been steadily trying to make time each day to pick up a drawing implement of some kind and draw. Last week, I was getting ready to leave for vacation, but I did accomplish a few things:

Day 3: Try out cross-hatching
This is a technique for shading that I'd learned about when I was keeping my sketchbook in university. I'd never actually tried it before, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I started out with simple shapes, but then I thought I'd try using it to shade in some sketches of eyes...

Day 4, 5 and 6: More eyes
The problem with me drawing eyes is that it rapidly becomes an addiction for me. I loved drawing eyes as a teenager, and I'm still obsessed by eyes now. I think it's because I have Asian eyes... I've always been interested in how the shape of your eyes changes how people perceive your ethnicity.

Day 7, 8, 9 and 10: Vacation sketching
We left for a vacation to California on Day 7, and I decided that I would just bring a little notebook and a pen with me. Drawing with a pen is quite a challenge for me, because I have no idea how to draw with a ballpoint pen in such a way that does not appear messy and scribbled. I think that the immediacy of the ink makes me lazy. I drew some doodles after having a cranberry with soda with my dinner:

Then I became interested in these plants after a walk in Griffith Park, so I drew a few with some hummingbirds I saw flitting around the park. It occurred to me then that I have no idea what a hummingbird tail looks like!

Then, it was an obsession with a pattern in some of the fabric on the furniture in our hotel room:

Then, it was this use of white on black to create almost Grecian-style drawings.  (I can't find the sketch right now, but I'll post it when I do).

Now that I've caught up with posting, let's see if I can keep it up!