SO...Day 1 of mermay is over...how did I do? (Patreon)

Hope you're having a good day so far! As I had previously announced, I have begun the Mermay challenge for this month. So far, it's going well! I've been successful! I mean, it is only day 2 and May has 31 days so there's still room to mess up but! I'm determined to see it through to the end and will be trying my hardest to complete it. I haven't used copics and ink since my mini February moon challenge so I was a bit apprehensive diving back into traditional artwork with a monthly challenge. Here's what my morning on May 1st looked like:

9:00 am - 

Ah, hello my dear old friends it's nice to see you again. Especially you red color pencil, although you're a lot smaller than I remember...Well, time to get started! Time to put the ol' gear into motion! Time to just jump right into it and really get things goin'!....I'm nervous. 

(If you're interested in the materials I use, you can find the list here! Everything's the same from Inktober except for the eraser, which is new. It's also awful, I wouldn't recommend it and I don't remember the brand and honestly that's for the better.) 

9:05 am - OK REALLY TIME TO START, com'n Vicki it's not that hard, just pick up the pencil, get focused, and start drawing. You can do this, don't be nervous, you can do this....

I then proceeded to hop onto Instagram for a 5-minute distraction from my nerves and the impending message in my brain telling me I was going to mess everything up. 

9:10 am - Fantastic, I finally got started! Laid down the liiiightest of light sketches, especially since the color erase pencil doesn't fully erase. At this point my mind is screaming at me, nothing particularly good or bad, just a lot of noise in my head. I'm still having to ease myself into the process and it takes a lot of gentle coaxing to convince myself to continue drawing. 

I start laying down lines more confidently as I follow the guides from my light sketch. If you notice the eyes and mouth in this picture are different from the ones I drew in the final version. I must've changed them about 5-6 times, feeling more incredulous each time. Needless to say, the paper remembered each alteration I made and by the time I decided on the final version it looked like a red smudged mess. 

Curse my indecisiveness!! 

At one point it almost felt like I was messing up on purpose. You know how we tend to feel the weight of our decisions more when we know that they're permanent? It was like I was putting hurdles up for myself just to see if I could jump them. Boy, did I try. 

I do end up finishing the sketch and tell myself not to fuss with it any further. Her left eye looks like she's suffering from allergies, but it's nothing a little white gel pen can't fix! :D

Ok, now it's time to ink. Gotta do some test strokes and see if my hand remembers what it feels like to ink traditionally...Ok, four strokes that's enough let's DIVE IN!

I let out the breath I've been holding the entire time I was inking. Pretty sure I took a mini-break after this stage just to clear my head for a bit. 

Added in colors and details with white gel pen, pushed myself back from my desk, and gave myself a nice pat on the back. 

I'm glad I decided to start this challenge because it reminds me just how important practice is! Even though my last experience with traditional art was in February (literally just a month and a half ago!) the nervousness I felt going into this challenge showed me that it was a medium that had already become unfamiliar. So practice is good, practice is important, and practice is vital if you want to get good at something. Want to improve at x? Practice it. Really, that's all it comes down to is practice. 

I'm happy with how days 1 and 2 turned out and am excited to move forward with this challenge. I already know what I'm going to draw for day 3, ah I can't wait! But really I can. If you want to see my Mermay journey throughout this month follow me on Twitter  or Instagram  where I'll post my drawings every day as soon as I finish them! For anyone else doing the Mermay challenge, good luck, you got this, you're gonna do great! <3

Thank you all so so much for your support and let's do our best this month! Woohoo yeah! :D

Love,

Vicki