I have a hard time drawing things I don’t like or things that don’t interest me enough. Meaning, I just won’t draw things I don’t like, or “boring” things. Usually those include backgrounds, objects (besides chairs), other people, etc. etc. 

If I do draw a background it’ll be scribbled in and loosely cross-hatched which I’ll say is “just my style.” And that’s not necessarily incorrect but it’s not the whole truth. I do like sketchier backgrounds and drawings, but not for my bigger pieces. If I make the main figure(s) polished, I like everything around them polished as well.

 But I haven’t been doing that, the one and only time I made a drawing with an actual background this year was for my piece Last Words. Some of my small sketches might have some sort of scribbled background but none that I can remember. The rest of my drawings are just figures and sometimes a chair or two floating around in blank space. 

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to not draw backgrounds but I want to be a more versatile artist. I want my art to be more environmental, I feel like my pieces could be so much more if they had backgrounds, or literally anything other than leaving 30-50% of the page blank. 

So this year I decided to start doing two things, one, draw backgrounds in every piece. And two, every month I’m going to draw something I absolutely hate drawing. I’m probably only going to do the second thing once a month so I don’t lose steam and immediately stop doing it haha. 

I made the piece below a little early, finishing it on 12/29/25. “Floor Plan”, 30 x 22” charcoal and pencil on paper. Not too happy with it honestly but I blame my shaking hands and the ruler I didn’t use because I left it in my dorm room. But I had fun working on this piece and was able to get a decent background in there, so that’s good enough for me! 

And I got January’s monthly drawing done as well, pictured below. 

I hate drawing still lives with a passion. I don’t know what it is about them but they bore me to death. I love looking at them when other people do them, I think they’re beautiful, I just cannot sit down and look at a stationary object and then draw it. So of course I chose a still life for January’s piece. (I’m not actually sure if I can call this a still life, I added a bunch of things I did feel like drawing so I wouldn’t go insane.) But I grabbed a random pitcher from my parents’ dining room, sat down, and drew it. 

I see a lot of still lives with a cloth behind the object(s) or off to the side bunched up around them, but I had wanted to incorporate myself into this drawing as well so I decided to put on a baggy sweater and use that as the cloth. I also felt like drawing a latex glove for absolutely no reason other than the texture interested me- and I’ve never drawn one before so why not throw that in as well; it makes it more interesting. 

I really like drawing my face, I know, I know, this is supposed to be practice for drawing more things I don’t like. But I’m only human and if I want to at least get through a few months of this I gotta add some things to keep my interest for a bit. I did draw my face at a tilt/angle I don’t normally, and cut off the top portion though. 

And finally I made this piece on 9 x 12” paper. I usually use 30 x 22” paper, the smallest I’ve used this year was 14 x 14.5”, so going smaller was tricky for a while, especially for the glove’s texture. But I think overall it came out well. The background for this was just a wall but I made sure to add gradients so it wouldn’t just be a block of gray or white. 

I am super, super excited for this year and all the projects I’ll be doing! I hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of break!