A Year in Pencil

“Doing the work” has been a recurring idea for me over the past couple of years. It’s literally become a personal mantra at times. In that spirit, I set aside a few things last year and decided to work on expanding the skill set I use to make a living.

I don’t want to say I spent the last year teaching myself how to draw, because I’ve always doodled … poorly, but I did. What I can say is that I made myself sit down and sketch something everyday for a whole year. I’m still not “good,” but I’m better than I was 365 days ago (well, 374 at this point). According to Malcolm Gladwell, mastery is achieved after 10,000 hours. The following images represent 300-350 of those hours.

You’ll see tutorials, exercises, and blatant copies of artists such as Mark Crilley, Josiah Brooks, Paris Cristou, Evan Burse, SwiftySpade, Christopher Hart and more than likely a few whose names I can’t remember at the moment. There’s even a handful attempts to copy the work of Fiona Staples and Ben Templesmith. And of course, there are some of my own sprinkled throughout.

So for better or worse, click here if you’d like to see what I’ve been up to.