The Xena drawing is almost done. I would have finished it today but I’m not a tight schedule of creativity throughout my day.

Xena has such wonderful jet black hair and in order to go pure black with graphite I needed to really work my arm hard.

I’m back on track today and working on the same drawing of Xena I started from two days ago. I also got some great gestures done today.

Having more fun with another practice called “Group Poses” plus I started a new Xena drawing.

I’m trying hard to see structure in the photo of Xena I’ve been drawing from for the past couple days and it’s not going well.

I really dislike this latest Xena drawing. I’ve overworked it and killed any emotion or feeling in it.

I really enjoyed the reverse gestures exercise from The Natural Way to Draw this morning.

Instead of constantly getting discouraged I try to focus on the process not the outcome.

Drawing Xena and measuring before every stroke I realized the problem with drawing methods upon checking my progress.

Today I switched gears, picked a new image, and tried a more traditional approach to drawing Xena.

I was pushing myself to just let the drawing happen and it turned into a pretty bad drawing.

We need to have a deep willingness to do “bad” or “ugly” art when trying to see rather than copy.