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Experiences on 21 Days Sketching Challenge

I have taken up this challenge to complete one sketch everyday (by spending around 30 minutes) for 21 consecutive days. Today marks the end of the challenge. (You can check my earlier posts for the actual sketches) It is such a relief that this did not end up prematurely like any other new year resolution.

Every evening, I would reach home, take snickers (the spoilt brat of a puppy at home) for her walk and settle down to this art work before anything else (despite all the rebellion from the mind). At the end if it all, what are the key take aways from this marathon exercise? I would want to use a framework to distill that. How else can I pose as a strategic thinker ?

I would want to evaluate this using 3 dimensions. First is the "skills" dimension, which is probably the simples of all. Obviously, any artistic hobby that we undertake shall add to our skills. Second would be the "self-actualisation" dimension. This is rather a big word but what I want to cover is how it helped the inner mind. Did it bring in peace, elevation? Helped the self esteem, etc ? The last is the "LifeStyle" dimension. Did it help with socialising? Increased the circle of friends and like minded people? Helped materially? Now to the rating...

In a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 represents the ultimate benefit, I would rate this activity as below


From the "skills" perspective, I realised that my strokes were getting better along the way. I use a digital medium (iPad Pro with Apple Pencil). It was so claustrophobic in the beginning. It was too slippery and never felt like the carbon on the paper. But "digital" is an important medium of the future and I can not avoid embracing it. I realised that the phobia and the inertia went down as days passed by and now I am comfortable on the medium itself. Just that, I was replicating references and I have not learnt any of the subjects by heart. I can not reproduce any of those sketches from my memory. That would be a totally different type of training. So just 2 stars only for this aspect.

On the Self Actualisation front, It did help with my confidence. But I was very restless and tensed on most of the days except when I drew the Buddha (what a coincidence!). I am yet to the get to the level where it will become a meditative activity. Therefore, I give it only one star.

It did help me to connect with some good friends. Venkat, being my challenge buddy, he motivated me everyday when we mutually shared our outputs. Some good constructive feedbacks from other  friends helped me feel that I am more connected with them than before. I have polished this old blog site just so that I can resume writing and posting. And this is a good start and deserves 3 stars on the life-style dimension.

Over all verdict - This activity was a great deal of learning and self discovery, despite how much skill I could obtain. So, it is worthy and I am glad to have taken it up.








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