DRAW / EVERY / DAY
Autumn '24 –
'25Draw something new.
There has to be color.
Don’t take it too seriously.
I draw every day. I started on October 25th 2022, and I haven’t stopped since. This past year I decided to push myself further than I ever had. A new colored sketch every day. I created a theme for every week, selecting subjects for it and used that framework to guide me all the way through 365 drawings.
It was an enormous learning process, I improved in a lot of ways but made apparent other areas I still needed it. I learned to move quickly but not be afraid to start over. To try new things and not stress over perfection. I posted all of this online as I went but I reminded myself frequently this isn’t for them, it’s for me.
Tools: Procreate
Week One
It’s no surprise as an online queer person I like to draw a colorful animal person as a placeholder for myself sometimes. A favorite color, a favorite animal, and a series of traits that make it become more and more tenuous that they’re even a deer at all.
Week Two
An ongoing worldbuilding project, a sci-fantasy setting with magic circles as the driving technology, from the mundane to interstellar travel. A lot of design decisions suddenly have to be made when you make yourself use color.
Week Three
A handful of characters I’ve drawn over the years, some of which I haven’t drawn in several years, or even named until now for that matter.
Week Four
There’s a lot of pokemon I like, I tried to narrow it down to seven but I did double up one day. Pushing the palettes and stylization was a goal here, I wanted to make them a little more my own.
Week Five
My proclivity for drawing handsome animal people was quashed since Skyrim doesn’t actually have that many. I chose to stay creature focused at the very least, getting some iconic choices and a couple personal favorites.
Week Six
If I’m looking for excuses to draw handsome animal people I would be silly to pass up this series with a really dumb release schedule. I’m a little mad at how well I locked in on Melon.
Week Seven
I’ve always loved magic. In any fantasy setting I zero in on it immediately, it’s why I’m drawn to them in the first place.
Week Eight
Another style exercise, I adore Minecraft and it has a lot of fun creatures to explore.
Week Nine
Winter was kicking off and I felt like indulging in some seasonal dioramas with some of the previous characters I drew.
Week Ten
I love a silly little lizard guy. This was the first set I had a hard restart with, I was really unhappy with my initial kobold design so I went back and redid the first couple. This is what also taught me to do a little exploratory sketching for some weeks.
Week Eleven
I was getting back into FFXIV after falling off hard the previous year, it has some cute critters I felt obliged to draw. If I draw something then all that play time is actually research, yes?
Week Twelve
After pooling some “what animal do you think I’d be?” responses I whipped up some alt sonas.
Week Thirteen
I used to play a lot of TTRPGs, mostly D&D but a handful of others as well, so I still have a huge stable of characters I’m not doing anything with.
Week Fourteen
I haven’t played Animal Crossing since quarantine but I do have a fondness for so many of its characters.
Week Fifteen
I didn’t actually grow up much with Digimon, I was really into Pokemon and Digimon was barely a blip to me. I grew up around the fan art, despite not watching the shows or playing its games I still saw a lot of Digimon online.
Week Sixteen
I’d been watching through the Disney animated movies chronologically with my household. Most of them are not as good as we remember, sorry. But I still enjoyed the process and contextualizing them as an adult. Also Disney really knows how to draw a cute animal/creature.
Week Seventeen
A short story from Eteron, the first magic circle.
Week Eighteen
I thought I would be a paleontologist when I grew up, I liked dinosaurs so much as a kid, I’m surprised I haven’t drawn more dinosaurs actually.
Week Nineteen
My favorite channel as a kid, in part because I spent so much time without it, we just didn’t get it in our area for a long time for some reason.
Week Twenty
I am a little houseplant-curious, I would like a little leafy guy in my space, but last time I tried I ended up with a million fungus gnats and I’m still recovering.
Week Twenty One
Monster Hunter Wilds introduced some great new monsters/variants and also Rove whom I love.
Week Twenty Two
A bit of a style experiment using Minecraft’s biomes.
Week Twenty Three
Another thing I used to be really into as a kid, cryptids. The unkown was so interesting to me, I was always pushing at the edges of what was understood trying to find some magic in the world.
Week Twenty Four
I watched so many cartoons growing up, I pretty much had the TV on from the time I got home until I went to bed. Read into that what you will.
Week Twenty Five
I love the SCP writing project, it has so many interesting subjects I tried to choose my favorites and some iconic ones too.
Week Twenty Six
Halfway through and already thinking about doing anything else.
Week Twenty Seven
Just some birds I like.
Week Twenty Eight
Springtime, using those OCs I unearthed some more and creating some new seasonal dioramas.
Week Twenty Nine
I adore Viva Piñata, I deeply wish they’d make a third game..
Week Thirty
I was thinking about game dev again, and my old college game project, a narrative driven puzzle-platformer with a cast of eclectic characters.
Week Thirty
One
I just really like Kuchipatchi, perfect creature. I guess I can draw his friends or whatever too.
Week
Thirty
Two
I have such strange nostalgic memories around these guys, I wanted so many of them and didn’t even like the look of most of them? What a strange time.
Week
Thirty
Three
Scraps and rejects from the alchemy school down the block. People really tried hard to make these seem better than they are in comments and replies. Sorry they’re just not very good potions.
Week
Thirty
Four
Highly underrated show. Huge recommend.
Week
Thirty
Five
I didn’t actually watch that much MLP:FiM. I did see it early though, right around the time the term ‘Brony’ was coined, but I don’t think I ever saw more than a couple seasons at most. I forgot they’re honestly just fun to draw, the colorful horses and their friends have good shapes.
Week
Thirty
Six
Just a day in the life of a certain deer.
Week
Thirty
Seven
You get to see so much of the world in Elder Scrolls Online, I wanted to share some favorite places.
Week
Thirty
Eight
This fully justified getting a Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart World, drawing a bunch of Yoshis.
Week
Thirty
Nine
I own replicas of 4 of these 7 items.
Week Forty
It’s such a sweet show, how could anyone not like Bluey?
Week
Forty
One
It took a lot of episodes of One Piece for me to realize I could be drawing one of the onliest deer main characters out there.
Week
Forty
Two
I looked at so many weird little guys before I landed on some hopefully more popular/recognizable ones.
Week
Forty
Three
The return of the seasonal OC dioramas, summer edition.
Week
Forty
Four
My only regret is I watched the second movie halfway through this week and I didn’t realize how much I’d like the other two new characters.
Week
Forty
Five
I like a game that gives you a little guy, fortunately they do that a lot.
Week
Forty
Six
The fidelity of the game makes it a little tough to do fanart but I did what I could for one of the most game of all time.
Week
Forty
Seven
I’m so normal about a cartoon wolf, I drew seven of them this week to prove it.
Week
Forty
Eight
I’m just as surprised it took me this long to do Star Fox.
Week
Forty
Nine
I never got a chance to incorporate Jaypeg into any other sketches—other than the OC week—I like my weird little computer kangaroo so I gave him his own week.
Week Fifty
The last of the cartoon channel trio, probably my most nostalgic pull too.
Week Fifty One
One last seasonal Diorama to finish off the series.
Week Fifty Two
The end is a little bitter sweet. I tried to stay positive and impart those little guiding phrases that spurred me through this project.
Finale
I messed up, it turns out a year is 52 weeks and 1 day. I promised to do the anniversary as well, for 366 days total, oops. Oh well.