I love challenges. They motivate me to do the things I wish I was doing all year long, such as drawing or making art if not every day, at least every other day.

This was my sixth year participating in these two challenges. As of yesterday, I’d completed 51 out of 61 cards for ICAD and 24 out of 31 little paintings for World Watercolor Month.

If I manage to do one today, I will post it later.

Instead of following the suggested prompts for each day, I chose to work through the first few chapters of The Complete Book of Drawing People by Barrington Barber. My goal for the month was to systematically get better at drawing people. I don’t know that I actually did that, but I tried. I confess there were a couple of sketches that were so unsatisfactory I threw them away without photographing them. All the rest, the good, the bad, and the ugly, I posted on ARHtistic License and on Instagram, not because I’m so delusional that I thought they were all good, but because all our efforts are significant, even when we fail miserably. I have nothing to lose by showing you my less successful endeavors, and I might even entice you to try what you’re dreaming of creating if you know that it’s okay to have a learning curve.

I’d like to share again the ones I like the best:

And this next one is my #1 favorite this year. You can see by the lines that didn’t get totally erased that this is a proportion study:

It’s funny how subjective our preferences are. On Instagram, this is my drawing that got the most likes:

I’m guessing he looks like a lot of people’s best friend.