Week TWENTY-THREE

Take Stock of your Skill Building

We’ve reached the sixth month of MAE 2021, and the mid-way point of the year is nearly upon us! Whether you’ve been following along since Jan 1st or you’ve joined more recently, now is a great time to take stock of your skill-building. What skills have you gained so far? What skills do you want to work on in the future? Taking time to reflect upon your progress is essential to establishing your art-making habit.

Start by choosing a time frame to reflect upon: it can be since the beginning of this year, since you joined MAE or since you started your art-making practice. I’ll give some personal examples below. My time frame of reflection is since the beginning of 2021:

Skills I’ve acquired or improved upon:

  • how to draw fur
  • rendering a painterly style
  • making objects look transparent
  • drawing and shading trees
  • drawing people, especially bodies
  • shading a face
  • making repeating patterns

Skills I want to develop in the future:

  • drawing backgrounds
  • drawing animals and characters in action
  • rendering water
  • improve hand lettering skills
  • lighting from different angles/types of lighting
  • making characters that are
  • simple yet expressive
  • creating a paper cut effect
  • making illustrated stuffed animals
  • more realistic shading

Once you are able to identify how far you’ve come, and where you want to go, you can start setting some intentions with the time you are spending making art. If you want to improve your shading, make an effort to include a light source in all your drawings. If you want to improve your characters, include a character in your drawings, regardless of the prompt.

Be sure to download and utilize the Reflection and Support Journals I’ve made to help analyze your progress and set goals for the future! You can fill them out right in Procreate.

June's Theme:

Activities

Whew! We have been learning so much lately! If you’re like me, you might be ready for a change of pace. I designed this month to be fun for fun’s sake! We’re getting back to some straightforward drawing prompts inspired by all the fun things there are to do in life…this month’s theme is Activities! The prompts are all based on activities you might enjoy when you’re ready to go out and have a little fun, from camping to amusement parks, beach days, and bike rides.

 

Week 23: Camping

Are you a camping person? One of my favorite summer activities is to plan a big camping trip with my family. I love going on nature walks, sitting around a campfire, making open-faced raspberry Nutella s’mores (trust me on that one), playing games at night with my sisters, and the sound of footsteps on gravel when all else is quiet. Camping provides me with much needed rejuvenation and a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I hope you have fun with this week’s prompts and drawing just for the sake of drawing!

 

The Prompts

Week 23 | may 31 - june 2

camping

Mon: tent
Tue: campfire
Wed: lantern
Thu: camper trailer
Fri: stargazing
Sat: hiking backpack & boots
Sun: binoculars

This piece was drawn using my Artist’s Pastels brush set for Procreate

You can access each week’s prompts, with links to reference photos, at makingarteveryday.com

This Week's Tutorial

Live Tutorial! DATE at TIME PST

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The best place to catch the live stream is on the Bardot Brush YouTube Channel. Don’t forget: You can watch or re-watch the previous livestreams on my tutorials page on Bardot Brush!

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This Month's Progress Tracker

You can always download the current month’s Progress Tracker at bardotbrush.com/progress

(its a .Procreate file, so you can keep track of your progress right in Procreate!)

You’ll find instructions about how to use the Tracker at the link above. I even made you a star stamp brush for you to use! It’s my Procreate version of a gold star sticker.

Share and Connect with other MAE Artists

We’ve got a Facebook group just for participants of Making Art Everyday and all things Bardot Brush! Come join our group of supportive artists of all skill levels, share your work, ask questions, and be a part of the community!

Making Art Everyday is brought to you by me, Lisa Bardot!

I’m the owner of Bardot Brush, one of the leading brush makers for Procreate. If you’d like to support me, please check out my premium brush sets that inspire creativity at bardotbrush.com.