A Season for hunting and a season for gathering

What season are you in right now ?

Are you working on some consistent routine, building up creative capital, filling sketchbooks, building pieces, keeping an artist diary. Or are you hunting, pursuing dome big idea or deadline relentlessly drawing from the resources you’ve already built up instead of storing up for later, depleting yourself to make something more ambitious than you’ve ever made.

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TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Hunt

Go over your sketchbook, journal or artist diary and read it with a red pencil in hand.

Circle the ideas that move you, the ones you were saving for later. It’s later. It’s time. Turn that idea into something, build on it. Or just collect a whole bunch of ideas on a page so you can see your best ideas/sketches/ at a glance.

Share it.

October Gallery

Not knowing what to draw today, I turned to a 21-Draw class on gesture drawing I had earmarked. The class was not I expected, I was expecting to do quick impressions of people walking or sitting in a cafe. So I looked up what gesture meant in art…

According to Berry Stein, it means capturing movement and direction. That makes sense to me, I think this is the first time I fully understood the term. I spent my customary 10 minutes, maybe 20 drawing from the course…

The first bit was to draw figures in ideal proportions, to be honest, I was tempted to skip this step. But I’m glad I didn’t and instead of finding it tedious like I thought I would, I actually found it relaxing. I approached it as a complete beginner and let go of any expected outcome and just focused on the process.

I was studying.

It’s recommended to repeat the study multiple times, each time you get a little better, repetition is a big part of learning. And as much as I’m a huge advocate for a playful approach to making art, there should also be a time for intentional study.

You’ll have to strike your own balance. The thing is, don’t do it so seriously, don’t set out a 52 week plan, instead, have the materials available and close at hand, and make your time to create.

Use some of that time for studying whenever the urge takes you. Let your interest and curiosity pull you rather than push yourself with a whip or a clock.

You’re reading the Daily Edition of Ten Minute Artist, if you prefer getting Weekly Editions you can adjust your setting here.

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Do a study

Copy work is part of An art student’s diet.

Here’s why we copy…

to see better

to see how others see

to get a greater awareness of how you

Find a good drawing, copy it, see what you see. If you’re not sure where to start, start with Wikipedia share your studies and what you learned?

October Gallery

A portion of an illustrators time needs to be allocated to portfolio work, that is the creation of work that demonstrates to particular clients that you understand and have unique solutions to their problems.

You’re reading the Daily Edition of Ten Minute Artist, if you prefer getting Weekly Editions you can adjust your setting here.

The Lag Effect

I was producing portfolio work for 2 years before getting my first book client. Towards the end of those two years I was least for ideas, and started reaching out to many illustrators more experienced them myself. One of them told me to keep going and that when the work starts coming in it comes like an avalanche.

And indeed it was an avalanche , so much so that I slowed down my portfolio work to the point I made very little altogether. Still the work kept coming in, there is a lag effect, but if you don’t keep up with the portfolio work eventually things quiet down.

I’ve seen this happen with many illustrators where they get so busy and neglect the portfolio work until the work almost dries up, then they ramp it up again, and the cycle repeats.

The thing about illustrators that don’t have feast and famine cycles is that they actively keep up with the portfolio work, in addition to doing side gigs that also serve as a kind of portfolio work.

What is Portfolio Work (verb)

Portfolio work is not just creating work to put on you website, It’s getting to know the people who hire illustrators and what they are looking for. And it’s presenting your personality and point of view by creating the in between pieces, that show the process and storytelling that helps art directors know you and not just the work.

Very often I notice this is done through autobiographical comics, newsletters, blogs…but it’s also done through skillful intentional use of social media.

The latter being the go to place people look for illustrators.

It’s also the place illustrators themselves mainly hate to use to promote their work. And the reason is that we can focus too much on the platform itself and not about the work.

Like oh, I need to make a Reel, or I need to Post a Story.

As I restart my season of making portfolio work a more regular part of my practice, I need to become conscious of not falling into the trap of making work for the platform, instead, I’m just going to make work… playful work lead by curiosity.

I’m going to focus on the joy of making things, And then I’m going to share them.

I drew this comic as i was thinking about what to share on social media, you need to be doing work behind the scenes in order to share behind the scenes work, so I’m glad I have been doing the work in the past week.

Instagram Stories

I might be late to the party, but I recently learned that instagram stories is the part of instagram that goes mostly to your own followers, which means it’s also the most fun place to be in as an illustrator who follows lots of other illustrators and creative people, because when I’m in there all i see is what the people I’m interested are doing, and I can react to that and strike up a conversation.

It’s also the easiest low stakes way to share things.

And the kinds of things to share on stories are:

1. Services you have to offer

2. Behind the scenes stuff

For all the ‘bad stuff’ meta is doing… stories is a place where you really can see what other artist are doing, and connect 1-1, so I’ll be kicking off my return to portfolio work by posing to stories. If you want to follow that this is my instagram

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Art I Made Last Week (month, year)

I’m not going to ask you to post on instagram, but I’m going to ask you to think about some of the recent work you made, or art that lights you up and make a 4 panel comic.

Step 1: Draw 4 boxes

Step 2: Browse your phone or memory for recent things you made or saw that interest you, draw the thing and write about it.

You can also document the steps of making the comic, to give you a few extra pieces of ‘content’. Trust me it’s interesting to look at the desk and minds of other artist we all want to see it.

This is an exercise to think about the things you could share but the comic itself is something you could share to help people learn more about you.

Share yours in the gallery!

October Gallery

💼 Portfolio work is such a big and important topic, I created a chat for anyone who wants to explore the topic more deeply.

PS: I make this newsletter because I want to make art everyday. And I want as many people who share that desire to have the ability to do that too. Liking, commenting and sharing help this newsletter reach more people, do it for the people :)

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Ten Minute Artist Weekly Rounds up the week’s daily prompts along with a few interesting finds of the week. It’s perfect catching up on any prompts you missed or if you prefer an hour of art making on the weekend rather than 10 minutes a day. You choose to receive daily and/or weekly editions here.

This Week’s Assignments

MONDAY: This week I started a new approach to parenting especially with regards to performance. I also applied it in parenting my inner artist who is also a child. The focus was allowing a love of art to emerge through play rather than forcing it.

TUESDAY: I made a rule for overcoming distraction, it may not work perfectly, but the more I do it the greater my self awareness, and this action changed my behaviour enough that the algorithm is also responding.

WEDNESDAY: When I made these 1 minute drawings with a think pen, I didn’t realize they would inform the work I would do, 2 days later. You could take Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s prompts as a mini project.

THURSDAY: Work and play blended for me as I approached things more playfully. So you got a little peak on how I make textures for my book illlustrations. The play part was fun, but I should also mention it took a day of editing, to craft it into something i was happy with for work.

FRIDAY: I made a four piece collage, it was super quick and fun, but it was only so successful because of all the little daily things I did throughout the week. When I started the week I had no map for where the daily practice would take me, but it did take me to very interesting places.

If you try any of the prompts, you can share them here in the chat galley.

This week’s prompts hinted at my process for making illustrations for picturebooks, in the coming week I’ll do a deep dive on that process in more detail for paid subcribers.

⚠️ You’re Reading the Weekly Edition. If you want to receive the Daily Editions you can toggle them on here.

Coming up…

✏️ is appearing as a Guest Teacher in on November 4th cohosted by and myself. We will be giving away a copy of Tom’s book ‘Drawing is Important’ in which I make a small cameo. This one is for Art Gym members.

🇵🇹 My retreat to Portugal in March is just one click away from being confirmed, thats right we just need one more person to enrol to confirm the trip, and send a bunch of us to a once in a lifetime creative experience!

Artist on substack

I think a good way to close out the weekly edition is to mention a few artist on substack that lit me up this week-ish.

’s 2 upcoming books will be out in March, this is really exciting for me because I learned that something she read in THIS newsletter prompted her to reach out to this specific publisher who ended up commissioning the books!

If you missed it, recently took us on a tour of The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (watch the video)

Austin Kleon

Inside the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Hey y’all…

Listen now

a month ago · 60 likes · 1 comment · Austin Kleon

Finally (for this week), I fully buy into every thing Deb said:

The Habit of Art by Kelcey Ervick

What Deb Said

Read more

a day ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Kelcey Ervick

And I’ll leave you with these parting words, try to allow more play into your life and see what emerges.

Yesterday, I painted some papers for work , which was a fun activity in itself. And in that post I said I’ll show you how to use that paper to make a collage. I’ll be honest when I got into the studio this morning, I didn’t feel like doing this, I wanted to draw simple naive drawings with a brush, I’ll save that for Monday.

What I did do is to bring some of that simple naive sensibility into today’s work, by limiting the number of pieces I used in the collage.

That was a good way to transmutate an urge.

Obviously made by hand

I was reading an article by an editor about how the suspicion of Ai in the writers he commissioned made him pull the articles. I read another thing that said, just because Ai can make a poster for you, it doesn’t make you a graphic designer. And just at this very moment dear reader I remember a thought I had 20 years ago, when more and more people were abandoning drawing skills for digital image creation… ‘Good’ I thought.

That means my ability to draw and work with my hands would become rarer.

One good thing about collage is it’s obviously made by hand, pair that with painted paper and you have the fingerprints of humanity all over it. So much of collage has to do with you being in a physical space and that just creates a uniqueness that is hard to replicate.

Where did the paper come from, what about the paint, the size of your work area… all this influenced the final simple form.

I believe that in the next couple of years at least there is going to be a premium for things that are obviously made by hand.

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

How to make a simple collage

1. Hand paint some paper

   

2. Look at the painted texture and try to see the image you want to create. Do you see the gorilla in the blotches.

3. Cut out the gorilla shape from the blotches, and use additional blotches for some details. I managed to do this with 4 pieces. Head shoulder and arms, Torso, hind legs, face

   

4. Then put it all together.

   

   It probably looks like magic putting together 4 pieces of paper and having them look like a gorilla, if there was indeed any magic it happened 3 days ago when I drew 8 one minute gorilla sketches, with zero thoughts of making a gorilla collage. Those drawings formed an education, that I drew from today when making decisions about the design of today’s gorilla. Here’s what I remember from my studies: the gorillas head looks rises up as a mountain/you can de-emphasise the back legs/ the torso sags and there is a reason it’s called a silverback gorilla/

I finished it by drawing details in procreate.

Share yours in the gallery!

October Gallery

How are you liking the return of the daily format? I’m considering doing a weekly recap, and let people choose between daily and weekly formats. If you enjoyed today’s post, please share it with someone or leave a like and a comment, it helps more people find it!

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As my style develops, the goal is to make less and less of the process digitally.

Painting papers

These papers were painted to serve as textures for a baby penguin, when painting the papers my only thought is of the colour and the brushwork that create the texture. I experiment and create more than I need, in fact I probably use a small proportion of what is created.

I am at once exploring what marks my tools are able of creating.

I’m creating some patches that will likely be used.

And I’m mixing the colours that will be used in the book.

When painting textures I try not to let the textures I try to be subtle yet descriptive. Textures are meant to describe to the eyes what something feels like to the hand.

Is it sharp or soft? (Use line and shape)

Is it hot or cold? (Use colour tempreture)

Is it thick or thin? (Use layers)

If you work digitally, hand painted textures are one way to make the work more tactile, and if you work physically, painted textures can instead be used for creating collages!

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Paint some texture sheets.

Think of an animal, perhaps a gorilla, or a frog, or even a crocodile.

Study some pictures of them paying attention especially to the textures, make more that you need, you are half creating and half exploring, in the next post we’ll turn those textures into a collage, I’ll use a gorilla for my example.

Even if you don’t join in for the next post, some textures painted in your artist diary make for fun exploration and more understanding about the tools you work with.

Share your textures here.

October Gallery

Style is a way of working, having unique ways of working is one way to be consistent in your style while setting you apart.

Paid subscribers will get a deep dive on how I combine sketches and paint done physically on my iPad to create final illustrations later this month. It’s also one of the modules that we’ll work on together in the Portugal Retreat.

I was inspired by the drawings of a 5 year old. I noticed how straightforward, bold and quickly those drawings were made. I also noticed a preference for thick bold lines, so I tried a number of tools to give me those lines.

That was my inspiration.

On Drawing with Thick Lines

I was thinking of the combination of stright and curved lines that crate the main shapes of a gorilla. This drawing captures what I mean best, but it wasn’t my first attempt.

My first attempt was much cruder but it captured the intention well. In some ways the first attempt is the best one, because it captures the the intention, but it also has the most ‘mistakes’ from a lack of understanding, as it was drawn without reference.

In my third attempt, I begin using reference I was looking for specific details of the face, like where do the ears go, and noticing what i notice that is different from the picture in my imagination/memory. This picture captures more ‘realism’ but sacrifice attitude and personality.

This one, captures the most originality, and is the one I can learn from the most. In it I describe the length of the gorilla’s hair the best, which is a useful piece of information. I think drawings are a kind of diagram that transmit information more directly than words, the diagram can hold a variety of different visual metaphors that our brain interpret. I enjoy mixing metaphors in drawing as it creates novelty and humour while conveying more information than a representation can on it’s own.

This drawing is one of the most successful of the lot, in it I synthesise a lot of the learnings from my previous drawings. I’m moving away from experimentation and into the realm of synthesis and editing.

After years of drawing ‘ugly’ drawings like these daily, I sometimes wonder how they relate to my actual job. A the answer is that the drawing themselves might not be something that has any use in the future, but they increase my awareness about subject, about tools and about myself.

And these combination of daily upgrades are so valuable.

I stoped working on a penguin character yesterday because I got stuck, todays unrelated practice got me unstuck and gave me a lot of ideas to explore when I go back to working on it.

What tools do you have that give you a thick line? If you had to do 1 minute drawings with this tool what subject appeals to you.

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

1 Minute Drawings with a thick pen.

Today I invite you to make a number of 1 minute drawings of the same subject with a thick pen.

Think of different aspects of the subject you can explore in each drawing. Feel free to leave the drawing unfinished. (In some of my drawings I excluded the face altogether)

The purpose of a thick pen is it doesn’t allow you to get to finicky with tiny details, so you get to focus on subtraction, proportions, shape and silhouette instead..

Remember to be playful and not fuss about the result either. Draw with the freedom of a child, when you feel like you’re done, do one more, incorporating the best bits of all your studies.

Share your work in the gallery.

October Gallery

Producer, rapper and fashion designer Taylor the Creator, “creates like a chile, and edits like a scientist”. It’s a good approach that has the different parts of your mind taking turns rather than fighting each other.

Ten Minute Artist exist so you can sit down daily and always have an answer to the blank page. Subscribe to support the newsletter and get a guided gameplan to make this your daily ritual

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Pattern interrupt

Building new habit is hard, modifying an existing habit is much easier.

I don’t know about you but one of my worst habits is getting caught on my phone and endlessly swiping. I say swiping because, you don’t exactly scroll anymore, especially when you get in to short videos, you are swiping up to get a new video.

So I want to swipe less, and I want to draw more which is why I invented this game to play with myself, I call it 3 swipes and draw. The idea is that when I catch myself swiping my phone 3 times, I have to stop and draw something from that third swipe.

I can draw exactly what’s on the screen, or any aspect of it, even use it as inspiration.

The main point is to build more awareness and get control of my scrolling/swiping and pulling myself out of it.

Want to play along too?

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

3 Swipes and Draw

Pay attention when you find yourself mindlessly swiping your phone. From that moment of awareness count the swipes. On the third swipe, stop scrolling and draw what’s on your screen.

This is the first time I did it.

You can go back to swiping but you have to stop at the third swipe and draw the next thing that comes up. Yes we’re making rules to make scrolling/swiping more inconvenient.

You will always win with this game because you are drawing more, and scrolling/swiping less.

I hope this game catches on, I’m going to try to keep doing it and improving the game, I invite you to join me, if you have any ideas about improving the game, leave a comment, and share or forward this to someone you would like to play with!

October Gallery

Kids are most creative when they are supposed to be doing something else, and we would be too if we allowed ourselves enough margin and didn’t reach for our phone all the time.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 A Portuguese egg tart while I draw…. I wonder if they will have those at the Retreat?

“Creative Work is Play. It is free Speculation using materials of one’s chosen form”

- Stephen Nachmanovitch

热爱 (rè’ài)

In Chinese one might say ‘rè’ài’ to mean a fire inside for a thing… directly translated to ‘hot passion’, it means something closer to a calling. The owner the chess school used that word to frame a conversation about how to nurture talent in a child.

Don’t force it, you have to wait for the ‘rè’ài’ to emerge, it takes time and doesn’t happen on a schedule. In fact scheduling a passion is a great way to kill it before it is fully formed.

I also heard this same attribute of top footballers referred to as Tanacity by the great football coach Arsane Wenger, to which he clarified to mean, “Stamina in your motivation”

I think they were talking about the same thing, a key requirement to performing at a high level. Which left me wondering how tenacious heat build up in some people and not others. I think all of us have a fire, but we don’t always nurture it to become this kind of heat.

I think the difference is in the framing of how we see the time spent with the thing, lets say the thing is ‘Drawing’.

Do we frame the time spent more as an obligation or an opportunity?

If your 10 minutes of practice is only an obligation, the fire will die out. But if it’s an opportunity to play, every time… then the heat will keep growing. Nurture your heat, by treating your time with your thing, as an opportunity to play.

Play is an opportunist pursuit, it is time stolen, word spoken out of turn, a zag when it’s time to zig. You can’t so much schedule play, as make room for it. My recommendations are an Artist Diary and Ten Minutes a day as room to play. And these prompts are toys that you might choose to play with any which way you please.

The owner of the chess school said, don’t schedule practice for your kid, instead make invitations to play, and respond to their invitations to play. I tried it for a couple of days, and truly, she’s been asking to play more, and talking about ideas about the game more. Which is a stark contrast to when practice was scheduled.

How do you transform obligation into opportunity?

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Blob People

I tried a new way of drawing people, in my play time, I’ll show you if you want to follow along.

1. Start with a blob for the body

2. Add a blob for the head

3. And small stumps for limbs, don’t plan the drawing just lat it flow

4. Extend the libs into hands and legs

5. finish with some details

October Gallery

Kids are most creative when they are supposed to be doing something else, and we would be too if we allowed ourselves enough margin and didn’t reach for our phone all the time.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 In Portugal we’ll mostly eat food grown from the garden. Let’s go on a Retreat?

Be a Sneaky Artist

Drawing in public is tough, mainly because it’s public.

Someone might come and look over your shoulder or gasp, come and talk to you! my substack buddy has found a way to avoid that problem by making sneaky art.

Anonymous tiny drawings of people he observes in the world around him. His first book Make Sneaky Art invited you to do the same. A year on Nishant has made his second book and is publishing it on Kick Starter. As a result he was able to make a book exactly as he imagined, and he’s imagined it as a field guide for people watchers.

YES, there is space for drawing.

But it’s not just for people who draw, instead it invites you to observe the people in your world with intention. I believe this book will heal some of the social ills that have befallen us in recent times.

But for this book to even happen it needs to get funded, so let me send you to his kickstarter page where Nishant will explain the book to you himself, and you could choose to become a backer.

The book is called, Tiny People, Big World. I know I’m going to enjoy it, I think you might too!

Have you ever wanted to make observations about people you’ve seen in writing or drawing?

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Spotted…

To celebrate the launch of this kickstarter, let’s use some of Nishant’s prompts from the book, you might redraw the prompt into your artist diary then try to fill it up, and if you share it do mention and his Kickstarter

As I headed out to a couple of places today, I’m looking forward to trying out these prompts.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 Need a break from everything but art? Let’s go to rural Portugal!

That one time I knocked someone down in training.

I was listening to an Art Director talk about authenticity yesterday.

“If I’m commissioning a scene in Russia, I’m going to look for a Russian illustrator”, he said. It’s frustrating to hear as an illustrator, because we want to believe we can draw anything, but this kind of attention to detail actually makes for better work. Does that mean I’m stuck drawing tropes based on my geography and heritage?

Mostly yes, unless I can demonstrate authenticity in the subject matter, and how can I do that if I don’t show the art director who I am?

Personal work, gets you work.

Drawing daily is a good way to tease out personal stories that you may not have put out there before. And if you don’t put it out there, no one know’s to hire you for the job.

Even if you’re not looking for creative work, presenting authentic stories or angles about yourself is how to make your art more human.

I once knocked a guy down while sparing, I wasn’t trying to, it was only a speculative sidekick, however the guy also decided to attempt a kick in the same moment, but his kick positioned his face in the path of my speculative kick, and that knocked him down, ending the round.

Taking my win that was the last time I was in a ring.

Could I illustrate a story about Muay Thai, Boxing or MMA, I think I could. They say write what you know, maybe the advice hold true for drawing too.

What subjects can you draw authentically? How can you bring more authenticity into your drawings?

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

How to draw authentically

As I was thinking about what the art director said on authenticity, I was looking around my room for something to draw, when I saw my old boxing gloves, I drew them. And I realised that there are pretty non obvious things that I could draw wit some level of authenticity, and it would make sense to figure out what those things are.

Scan your space for an object of interest, draw that. Then scan your memory for a related experience, and draw that. Share the experience. And share the drawing, let there be a record of what is authentic to you. (An Art Director may be reading)

October Gallery

Try this exercise in different locations, build a list of subjects you can be authentic about.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 Need a break from everything but art? Let’s go to rural Portugal!

I tried to write 5 newsletters at once was going nowhere..

Could you write 5 daily newsletters on one day, I tried, and it was going nowhere.

It’s the same with having multiple things on a todo list, or trying to work in multiple styles or serve multiple niches, in the end you have to pick one. When I turned 40 I got multifocal glasses, and I can tell you it made my vision worse overall. My periphery focus was now a cloud, when looking down from a high vantage point everything became blur. And my yes had to keep shifting around to try to find a focus.

Multi focus is just shifting focus.

Multi tasking is task switching rapidly

We can only ever do one thing at a time. Time management is a scam. All we have is choice management.

Yesterday I wrote one item on my todo list, and I did it for the whole day and it got done

Are you trying to do too many things at once. If you had to pick one for now, what would you pick?

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

PICK SOMETHING TO DRAW

My 5 year old opened a pretend store with some of her toys today.

This is my loot from her shop. The Stick and Slinky is ‘cotton candy’. I’m offering this loot to you as a drawing prompt. Pick one object and draw it.

If you need more of a challenge try imagining it from different angles.

October Gallery

So it looks like I won’t be able to batch write the newsletters, there is only enough juice for one in a day, which is all the more reason to do it daily.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 Need a break from everything but art? How about a Retreat?

Our Brains Are Meaning Making Machines

If you wrote a word next to a shape our brains would naturally make it make sense.

So what if we used this superpower, and gave our brains two unrelated things to figure out. We could even prepare a collection of unrelated things as prompts to pull out whenever we need a little jolt. Or just want to see what our brain comes up with.

Pick a shape. Pick a word. Now see if your brain can connect the two.

Let’s do some work for future you.

There is going to come a time when you just want to draw but don’t want to think what to draw, so today we’re going to do the thinking in advance. We’re going to think of a few words or names of things that might be fun to draw.

And we’re also going to come up with some unrelated shapes, we’re going to put these names and shapes on cards.

So when you need a quick thing to draw, you can pick a name and a shape and use them as prompts.

Was it difficult thinking of things to draw and do you have shapes that you are naturally drawn to?

Leave a comment

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

Word and Shape Prompt Cards

Cut 8 namecard sized pieces of paper or card in half. On one stack write a word you would enjoy drawing on each card, on the other draw a random shape on each card.

Shuffle and draw a card from each pile at random, or use this as your prompt…

If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:

October Gallery

By making your own cards you could come up with endless combinations and variations, you might even combine 3 or 4 cards to create an image. Creating little tools like these is like doing future you a favor.

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

Want the ultimate drawing prompt for? (FREE)

🇵🇹 Need a break from everything but art? How about a Retreat?

What Options Can We Remove To Help Creativity and Consistency Thrive?

Without constraints most tasks are just impossible to complete.

Especially with creative tasks, the possibilities and tendency to overcomplicate mean most projects or ideas never get off the ground. One way to give ideas a good chance of survival is to create some constraints or rules around them. That’s what Yao Xiao author of the substack did, and that enabled her to draw comics for 365 days straight!

In your own practice, what are some limitations you already use or could add to make the work easier and therefore more consistent?

How do you wrap up a day?

I love drawing comics, but most of my attempts take me about 5 hours to complete, the only exception being the Ten Minute Visual Journal Method which I do in the morning. So I need a different way to create a book end to my day.

Because I work from home, and am going from deadline to deadline, aging a way to create separation and ending the workday is something I crave for but never really managed. That’s why when I read ’s rules for making comics and learned that it only takes her 20 minutes each night, I was intrigued.

I tried it following her rules, and managed to get it down to 10 minutes.

Here are Xiao’s 4 Rules (follow her substack to get the full details)

1. No comics about making comics

2. Work directly in pen, no pencils, no colours,

3. Never skip a day (she did it for a year)

4. Allow the characters to evolve naturally

Xiao designed her rules to keep the process fun and take the seriousness tediousness out of the project, and to ensure she could keep going. Better to show up consistently with constraints than occasionally with perfection.

I would add a 5th rule, use lined paper. Xiao uses lined paper in most of her work but not all so it’s not a rule, I think using this kind of paper takes the seriousness and pressure out of the making

So is this going to be my evening routine, will it be yours? i don’t know but I really like having a clear set of limitations that make the job easier.

Which rule resonated with you the most, and which rule bothers you? Do you have a rule to add?

Leave a comment

TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT

DRAW A COMIC TO MARK THE END OF YOUR WORKDAY*

*give yourself some rules to curb your negative tendencies. (Perfectionism etc..) Feel free to copy the rules suggested above or create your own!

If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:

October Gallery

I used to believe that the only way I could draw a comic strip was by giving myself 5 hours to do it. Maybe by giving myself more limitations, and allowing myself to not be very good at it in the beginning, I can draw comics more often, something I really enjoy doing!

Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.

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🇵🇹 Need a break from everything but art? How about a Retreat?

Hello Artist Friend,

Welcome to Ten Minute Artist: the leading newsletter for building a daily creative habit through daily drawing and journal prompts, encouragement, perspective, meditations and practice advice for living a more creative life.

You don’t need to wait until you have your perfect situation to start creating, but you can absolutely start creating today in small increments.

These tiny increments do add up and as they do they create momentum, confidence and a body of work. 200 million people in the world share one creative project, and that is the keeping a diary.

I want to encourage you to keep an Artist Diary; a place for daily mini art adventures. It’s been scientifically proven that engaging in some kind of creative act for as little as 20 minutes a day can make a meaningful impact on your physical and mental well being.

I believe that by getting off your phone and into your artist diary we can get those benefits in as little as 10 minutes. And if you’re asking yourself, “What exactly you’re going to put into an Artist Diary?”

You’re in the right place.

Who is Ten Minute Artist for?

Ten Minute Artist is specially for:

• 🕶️ Shadow Artist: For some reason you have been lead to believe that you don’t deserve to make art even though you consider yourself highly creative, and as a result you are working in some art adjacent industry, perhaps as a curator, designer, teacher, shop keeper or some other behind the scenes role supporting ‘real artist’, I’m not asking you to change careers, I’m simply asking you to give yourselves 10 minutes a day to create for yourself.

• ✏️ Aspiring Artist: Whether you went to art school or are teaching yourself art, the journey to go pro or even making a meaningful income from art can sometimes be so all consuming, that we forget to make art for the pure joy of it, for you the prescription is the same 10 minutes a day to create for your self will recharge your creative batteries, fill you with energy, and give you you a clearer sense of purpose. Your artist diary also serves as an engine and reservoir of creative capital.

• 👨‍🎨 Creative Professionals: Even creative professionals need a space that is completely free from commercial concerns, a place to connect with their geeky passions as well as other artist and just make art for the pure joy of it. You know this but it’s just hard to make the time or decide what to draw.

Now, here’s how I can help…

The Biggest Roadblocks To Making Art For Yourself

• Roadblock #1: Lack of Time — Many people feel they don’t have enough free time in their busy schedules to dedicate to a daily art practice. They struggle to find even 10-15 minutes per day to commit to creative activities.

• Roadblock #2: Feelings of Inadequacy — Some people are held back by a belief that they “aren’t artistic” or lack the necessary skills to create art. They may feel intimidated or self-conscious about their abilities, leading to a reluctance to start.

• Roadblock #3 Fear of Failure or Imperfection —The pressure to create “good” art every day can be paralysing. People may avoid starting a daily practice out of a fear of not meeting their own high standards or producing work they deem unworthy.

• Roadblock #4 Difficulty Forming New Habits — Establishing a consistent daily routine can be challenging, especially if someone has struggled to maintain habits in the past. The initial effort required to make art a regular part of the day can seem daunting.

• Roadblock # 5 Competing Priorities — With work, family responsibilities, and other commitments, daily art may not feel like a top priority for everyone. Other tasks and obligations can easily take precedence, pushing creative time to the side.

• Roadblock #6 Not Even Knowing Where to Start — Lack of knowledge or too much knowledge could leave one paralysed and not even know where to start.

• Roadblock #7 Lack of Community — Outside of art school it’s not easy to find other creatives who are willing to share their journey and imperfect creations. Creating in isolation might seem futile without a sense of accountability or camaraderie

• Roadblock #8 No Recovery Plan When You Fall Off — Life happens and with out a plan to get you back on track if you fall off, a missed day can quickly become, weeks, months and even years…speaking from experience.

Now, lets talk about how to solve these…

Ten Minute Artist: Daily Meditations, Prompts And Education to Help Keep You Creating In Tiny Increments.

Here’s what you can expect from me for free — every single weekday:

A Daily Meditation

Austin Kleon says; “books are made from books”. Well so are Newsletters, they are also made from other newsletters. By regularly collecting notes from the finest prompts, essays, interviews and courses and creativity, I continue to amass a library of notes on the creative practice. Tempered with my own experience I share these notes as daily meditations for encouragement, insight and practical advice.

A Daily Prompt

I’ll also share a drawing and occasionally writing prompt based on the meditation, so you can go straight to creating. The prompts leave lost of room for creativity and interpretation. And are all designed to be completed in as little as 10 minutes.

Start And Keep A Drawing Habit

It’s a shame most people stop drawing by the time they are 7, mostly through external pressures, together with the help of the ten minute artist community, I want to help create a safe space for you to start drawing again and keep going!

By doing the prompts you become a Ten Minute Artist, no existing skills required!

Who Am I?

Let me introduce myself.

Adam Ming is a startup cofounder turned picture-book illustrator at 40, the change also marked the beginnings of this newsletter, since then, Adam has gone on to illustrate nearly 20 books in his first 5 years in the business for top publishers including, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury, Hatchett, Magic Cat, Walker Books and Anderson Press to name a few.

His books have won and be nominated for numerous awards voted, by libraries, kids and other institutions, notably “Down the Hole” was shortlisted as Children’s Book Of The Year by Barnes and Noble, as well as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard and “Where Are You Really From” was awarded book of the year in it’s category by The Week, Junior Book Awards.

Popular Post

Want to get a taste of the kind of content you can expect around here?

Here are some of the most popular posts:

• How To Keep An Artist Diary

• Humanity of a Ten Minute Artist

• 200 Million People Have This One Personal Project

• Everything I know about becoming a Children’s illustrator at 40

I also love answering questions about the creative practice and my journey into illustration!

So if you want me to answer any questions about these topics, just leave a comment on any newsletter post, I read them all! :)

⬇️ What you get when you join ⬇️

🎁 For starters, I have a gift for you.

The moment you become a free subscriber, I’ll share my ultimate drawing prompt called the Ten Minute Visual Journal Method as a 5-Day FREE email course.

This is a prompt I use almost everyday for its simplicity and density of what it has to offer in a single 10 minutes session. In this course I go deep to unpack every facet of this prompt that I’ve spent more than 500 days spanning a number of sketchbooks.

Subscribe now

When You’re Ready For Something Deeper

The daily dispatches will always be free.

But for artists who want a structured path to take their sketches from daily ritual to a calling card, paid members unlock two things:

1. The 30 Day Gameplan (Live Cohorts):

Three times a year, our entire community kicks off a synchronized 30-day sprint. The goal is turning the daily ritual into a goldmine for ideas and kick start a process of earning True Fans. Turning your daily habit into the engine of a professional creative practice. (Founding Tier)

2. The Monthly Studio Deep Dives:

Once a month, I pull back the curtain on how books are made, how to make friends in the industry, how to put together a portfolio, and how to keep growing without burning out. Plus answers to your biggest questions about being a freelance illustrator making picturebooks. (Paid Tier)

Click here to join Ten Minute Artist (and start building your daily creative habit.)

It’s also a great way to start a sketchbook or artist diary

TEN MINUTE ARTIST: Home | About | Projects | Start a Daily Drawing Habit

Thank you for being a subscriber to TEN MINUTE ARTIST. If you enjoy today’s prompt(s) consider supporting with a paid subscription. (annual is 58% cheaper) You can also leave ❤️ to show your support and help others find it on substack or ✉️ forward it to a friend!

I love a good guided sketchbook, and being at my desk at 4.30 one morning, it was the perfect way to get the creative juices flowing. Berry Stein recommends starting with some warmups and after doing them, I could see why…

In her book a couple of warmups that were recommended are Automatic Drawing & Blind Contour Drawing.

Automatic Drawing

The first warm up Berry recommends is called Automatic Drawing originally developed by surrealist artist like André Breton in the 1920’s as a way to access the subconscious mind.

This meditative approach can be done with any material, make a mark, keep going and stop when you feel a sense of completion. I felt that sense of completion multiple times, but kept pushing through.

All the while I was being conscious of leaving my rational mind out of it. For example I subconsciously drew a bird, but when my rational mind asked me to draw more birds, I ignored it and drew a random shape instead.

I also used tape and some cut pieces of paper and stuck them where it felt right. You can call it intuition or the subconscious mind but there is something guiding your hand other than rational thought, and it’s both enjoyable and powerful to be guided in this way when making art.

And automatic drawing is the easiest way to access this unrational way of being. it’s also a nice break from overthinking!

TRY AUTOMATIC DRAWING

1. Gather your materials and a drawing surface

2. Set a timer for 10 minutes

3. Start and keep going till the timer ends, don’t judge the process and express freely, I’m giving you permission.

4. Nothing is off limits, if something taboo comes out, you can always cover it up later, adding layers and textures to the piece ( I offer this last point to let you freely engage with your subconscious)

If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:

October Gallery

Blind Contour Drawing

I’ll be honest whenever I get this prompt, I always feel, like I already know it. (And thus drag my feet a little)

But today I decided to do it anyway, And I enjoyed it! Blind contour drawing builds the connection between what you are seeing and what you are drawing, and essential skill when drawing.

Try Blind Contour Drawing

1. Pick a subject to draw, not a reference image something in 3D, maybe a plant, a coffee cup, a partner… I used a fishbowl

2. Draw the subject while continuously looking at it and never at the paper, making continuous lines that match your gaze preciecely

3. Remember the goal is not to create a great drawing, it’s to build the relationship between what you see and what you draw, it’s totally okay for the result to be distorted!

This is a brilliant warmup, and there is a thing that happens when drawing that is hard to explain, this brain and eye connection makes you feel like your drawing in 3D, like your flat piece of paper is a 3d space, like you’re building your image in mid air by laying wire… weird but cool, let me know if you get that sensation too.

If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:

October Gallery

I was reminded of these two exercises when reading ‘Art Life Practice’… by Berry Stein. As I continue to work through the book, I’ll share my drawings and experiences here.

And now I have a third warm up to offer you, and I call it…

Collage something

For the past 3 years I’ve colllected books, magazines and ephemera in a collage drawer. Sometimes I add leftover scraps of paper painted with leftover paint. I recommend everyone keep a collage drawer.

Mine is a paper dump, but I’ve seen some people organize by culler and even cut out letters, go as crazy as you want. if you don’t have a collection of ephemera, just grab an old magazine, and lets get to cutting.

Heres the challenge.

Try Collage

Pick a subject, I picked a mason jar with a fish in it.

Now try to create a collage of the subject using 10 pieces of paper or less. This forces you to focus on essential details and shapes. This exercise helps you sift through the abundance of visual information and make thoughtful personalised selection.

You select what to represent.

You select what papers to make those representations.

But cutting, you are drawing with scissors… removing everything that is not essential

And in building the arrangement you are practicing your composition skills.

If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:

October Gallery

And there you have it!

3 ways to warm up your drawing muscles, accessing the subconscious, connecting your hand and eye, and selecting what is essential.

Warming up creates a momentum that you can bring into other creative work, but it is creative work in itself, but while a lot of creative work expands your creativity these warmups done for yourself actually charge your creative batteries.

The next time you have a stretch of creative work to do, try starting with a warmup!

Which warmup did you enjoy the most and which ones to you feel a resistance towards?

Leave a comment

FYI, I think I’m going to go back to posting daily again, because, reasons.

PS: I’m hosting an art retreat in Portugal in March 2027, and you can learn more about that here.

Welcome to the monthly project, every month paid subscribers get a 5-Day project that you can do in ten minutes a day(ish). These project help keep your artist diaries fresh, and serve as a great way to jump back into a regular creative practice.

Upgrade to unlock this and all previous projects, along with access to share your work in the community. Plus instantly unlock a 15 day Guided Plan to: Start a Daily Drawing Habit — Delivered daily to your email.

🇵🇹 Join me in Europe and we’ll turn your doodles and sketches into finished illustrations

Today we’re Going to draw the final 16 faces to get us to 100.

The point of all this is to take all the seriousness out of drawing and allowing yourself to make those disposable, playful drawings, most will be bad, but some will be great. It’s easy to think that every time we start a drawing it needs to be great, it doesn’t, professionals know (I’ve asked them) that the game is to make a lot of drawings and only using the best ones.

So with that, let’s make 16 more faces and get us to 100.

If you haven’t started, you can start at Day 1.

Read more

I tried taking myself for a retreat, once, twice three times in the past 18 months. You can ask my wife.

Just to get away, process my thoughts and think about my next steps. It’s coming to my 5th year as a picture-book illustrator, and the strategy for the first 5 years is different from the strategy for the next 5.

Three times I nearly booked. Three times something got in the way: a deadline, a clash in the calendar, money. There was always a reason to do it later

So when Sofia wrote to me to invite me to host a retreat in her beautiful property in Monsaraz, Portugal, I knew it was a big YES!

I would like to invite you to joining me on the retreat!

I’m calling it Drawing Playful Picture Stories, because there is going to be a huge emphasis on playfulness and its importance on serious work. The goal is to get you from blank page to ugly drawings and then from ugly drawings to finished illustration or what we will be calling picture stories.

Because an illustration is a picture that tells a story.

Inside these 5 days I’ll be showing you the ingredients and the steps for making Picture Stories for your own satisfaction or even for the biggest names in publishing the process is the same. I’m giving you the recipie.

And it’s probably much simpler than you imagine. (And more fun too!)

It’s not that complicated!

You don’t need what you think you need…

Most people who want to make picture stories believe the door is locked from the inside, and cannot be unlocked without first..

• Going to art school

• Mastering anatomy and perspective

• Going on a multi year quest to “find their style”

• Studying every medium and every piece of software

• Making beautiful sketchbooks spreads (really ugly drawings will do)

I believed some of this too.

I’ve been teaching myself illustration since I was 11, and it took me 29 years to go professional. I wasted a lot of that time on steps I didn’t need. I lacked clarity and direction. Mostly, I lacked a way of thinking, and I overcomplicated everything.

Then I spent a decade in startups, and I watched ideas turn into working businesses in a single weekend. Not because those teams worked harder, but because they thought from first principles. They cut every redundant step and they did the right steps in the right order.

When I turned 40, I took that thinking back to drawing. Within five years I’d published 15+ children’s books with Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Walker Books, Penguin, Magic Cat, Happy Yak, Simon & Schuster and more.

Here’s what I learned: most of the steps on your checklist are distractions. With the right ingredients, in the right order, a ten-year journey can be completed in ten months.

And you can go from stuck to making work you love over a long weekend, and I want to show you how.

Here’s what we’ll do.

At the retreat, I’ll share the recipe I use for every picture story, from blank page, to ugly drawings, to finished illustration. The ingredients are surprisingly simple.

We’ll learn to strike the right balance between research and drawing from what’s already inside of you. I’ll share 4 ways that make drawing ridiculously fun and easy, yet yield professional results.

And I’ll show you an ancient composition philosophy from the Far East.

I’ll give you a recipe you can use again and again, for personal projects or professional ones. It’s also the same process I use to make books that pay five-figure advances. (During the trip I’ll tell the story of how I broke into publishing at 40)

Ugly drawings are insanely valuable

The hardest part of any picture story isn’t the final illustration.

It’s the messy middle that feels like trying to remember a dream, we’re going to reframe this part as the fun part. Instead of getting stuck and giving up. We’ll play with ideas and gain confidence in this messy phase.

I’ve designed this retreat as a series of drawing games. Each one leads you to the next step, and along the way I’ll show you the secret doors and power-ups that get you unstuck.

More importantly I will show you how to find your own secret doors and build your own power ups!

We’ll mostly be working in our sketchbooks, and there will be one session where I show you how I turn those sketches into final illustrations, in that session you can choose to follow along digitally on your iPad or with traditional media.

Better in person

I’ve taught this playful approach for years, through my newsletter, online workshops and one-on-one mentoring. People I’ve mentored have gone on to sign with agents and land book deals and just have so much more fun with drawing.

But some things can only happen in person.

When I ran design sprints for startups, we used collaborative tools to turn a room full of ideas into clear decisions and feedback fast.

I’m bringing those tools to drawing and sharing them with you.

We’ll to learn with and from each other. You might think you’re the ‘worst in the room’, but inexperience can often lead to the most creative and surprising solutions.

Surrounded by inspiration minus the distraction

There is a village on a hilltop wrapped in medieval walls.

Whitewashed houses are trimmed with colour, narrow cobbled lanes, tall chimneys, and at the top, a castle with a stone tower. On one side, the Alentejo plain rolls to the horizon. On the other, a vast lake glitters all the way to Spain.

This is Monsaraz. Being here feels like stepping back a few centuries. In March, before the crowds, it can feel like the village is yours alone.

We are going to turn this into a playground for your characters and their stories.

We’ll bring the characters we’ve created on sketch walks and discover the village and castle through their eyes.

A favourite moment will come when your characters come to life.

Feedback from me and the group will help you start a positive iteration process and suddenly your characters will be stepping into the worlds you’ve built and telling their own stories (there will be tons of prompts to guide you through each activity).

And everything else is taken care of: your room, your meals, lunch in the garden, olive oil and wine tastings, and a dinner inside the castle walls. For five days, your only job is to play, draw, and see what your character sees.

What you’ll leave with

• A filled sketchbook and a repeatable recipe for turning ideas into picture stories

• Characters you built, drawn a dozen different ways, that feel alive

• Artist Friends: fellow artists as committed as you are, who’ll keep inspiring you long after you’re home

• For some, this will be the beginning, or the reawakening, of a creative practice.

• For others this might be a first/next step into a career you love.

What people say

Testimonials from Adam’s Newsletters, 1-1 mentor calls and, online workshops

“I got a spot with Adam Ming and I cannot tell you how much I learnt! It feels like I levelled up my art philosophy in 40 minutes! Thank you Adam for the amazing insights. You are so knowledgeable and so generous.”

Marzieh Abbas, Award winning Author

“I struggled to break into picture book illustration till I discovered Adam’s Substack. Adam’s thoughtful advice and the way he lays it out in a road-map style with easy to follow instructions helped me from getting overwhelmed and discouraged. Highly recommended!”

Rachel Foo, Illustrator

“Adam gives thoughtful advice and support for every stage of your illustration journey!”

Beth Spencer, Introvert Drawing Club

“Adam is unrelenting in his quest for creative success! His tips and techniques for consistent growth are top notch. ”

Jacob Souva, Drawing a Blank

“If you are looking for daily prompts to keep drawing, you couldn’t ask for a kinder, funner host!“

Wendy MacNaughton, DrawTogether with WendyMac

Here’s everything that’s included

• 3 days of hands-on workshops with Adam (16 hours of teaching)

• A designer sketchbook, personalised by Adam with playful prompts and exercises, for the retreat and beyond

• A one-on-one session with Adam on site, for your project, your portfolio, or anything you like

• A follow-up call after the retreat: Q&A, portfolio review, strategy, or talking through a project

• 4 nights at Hotel Vila Planície, breakfast included

• 3 lunches and 3 dinners

• Olive oil and wine tastings

• Private luxury coach transfers to and from Lisbon Airport, with a stop at a local pottery workshop on the way home

11–15 March 2027 · 15 seats · €2,500 all-in

Early access: the first 5 bookings get 12% off, at €2,375. (Update all early access bookings have been claimed)

However from now till Dec 5th, we are having a friends and family promo, sign up with a friend or family during this period for 15% off! (Someone will be in touch with you to apply all the right discounts)

Visit the Retreat website

No risk to reserve

You won’t be charged a cent until the retreat is confirmed. It goes ahead once 6 people have booked, so the first five aren’t just getting the best price. They’re the ones who make it happen.

Once it’s confirmed, you can pay in four instalments. If plans change, you’ll get a full refund up to 60 days before the retreat.

Is this for you?

This retreat is for anyone who wants to go from blank page to final illustration in a fun and playful way.

It’s for you if you want to experience new positive and uplifting ways to think about your creative process. And it’s for you if you want to experience creating alongside other passionate creatives.

All levels are welcome. Whether you want to create Picture Stories for your own pleasure, or have professional ambitions.

You just need to be willing to play.

This retreat is not just for people interested in Children’s Publishing, but if you are I have some uncommon perspectives that I know will be useful, that I share freely from personal current experience.

It’s not for you if:

… you take yourself too seriously to play

… you’d rather keep your work to yourself than share it and collaborate

… your life is already overflowing with good food, fresh air, and time to create

One last thing

I might run retreats again.

But this one, with this group, in this village, this March, will never happen again in quite the same way.

I followed my dream to become an illustrator at 40 because I realised a decade will pass whether you use it or not. I decided to use this decade to pursue children’s illustration, and it changed my life.

I don’t know what your dreams are, but I know decades will pass whether you choose to chase them or not.

If something in you has been waiting for the right time and place, this might be it.

To reserve your seat.

1. Visit retreat website

2. Insert your details in the Booking Form and you will be contacted with more details

3. Be the first 5 to gain a 5% discount: as soon as we get 6 participants paid the retreat is confirmed and you can book flights.

I’m truly looking forward to spending in-person time with you in March next year!

Book Now!

P.S. If you have questions reply to this email I’d love to chat with you further about the retreat or write to info@sofiainmonsaraz.site, Sofia is my partner and venue host for this retreat and I will be copied in all replies for your bookings

Welcome to the monthly project, every month paid subscribers get a 5-Day project that you can do in ten minutes a day(ish). These project help keep your artist diaries fresh, and serve as a great way to jump back into a regular creative practice.

Upgrade to unlock this and all previous projects, along with access to share your work in the community. Plus instantly unlock a 15 day Guided Plan to: Start a Daily Drawing Habit — Delivered daily to your email.

Today we’re going to mint a self portrait.

We’re going to start with a circle frame today… In it we’re going to draw a self portrait in profile view. What is important to note, if you want to get the face right in the center is this…

Read more

Welcome to the monthly project, every month paid subscribers get a 5-Day project that you can do in ten minutes a day(ish). These project help keep your artist diaries fresh, and serve as a great way to jump back into a regular creative practice.

Upgrade to unlock this and all previous projects, along with access to share your work in the community. Plus instantly unlock a 15 day Guided Plan to: Start a Daily Drawing Habit — Delivered daily to your email.

Today we’re going to take our favourite face from yesterday, and give it some expression

Let’s get started!

Read more