For my emotional wellbeing, I need to reclaim art as an active part of my life, and to do that I need to rebuild my fundamental skills, which are really suffering after six years of almost no fine art (drawing/painting). Rebuilding fundamentals requires sketches and studies, a practice I attempted to start months ago, and quickly failed at because I was too disappointed with myself when I couldn’t sketch daily. My symptoms are still too unpredictable for a daily art commitment to be feasible. So, I’m going to label them by year and number, and just do it as often as I can manage, and hopefully that will help keep me from falling into a “what’s the point” pit of self-defeating depression. I have also sought out a couple more Facebook drawing groups in the hopes that they can help me stay motivated while I get back into things.

The first teacup I tried to draw is a very fancy British teacup with fluting and whatnot, making the shading and reflections too complicated. I wasn’t having fun, and was just getting frustrated. So, I switched to a Chinese teacup with a much more straightforward structure and slightly less glossy glaze, making it a much better subject for practicing shading transitions. I used graphite pencils HB, 2B, 4B, & 10B. It’s not even remotely to what I know I am capable of, BUT it is far better than I expected to manage today, so I’m actually very happy with it and feeling optimistic about my learning curve to get back to where I used to be.