After our visit to the Denver Art Museum this week, getting a new sketchbook, and a few drawing books from the library, I am taking every chance I can get to practice drawing. I am reading and trying the lessons in the books on drawing with shapes and drawing with lines. I am working on shading exercises. Here are some of the sketches coming out of my practice.

What’s fun for me is that it is an easy and gratifying way to engage my older kids. It is something they like to do and want to learn. It is a very inexpensive and enriching activity for all of us.

Here is a “fail” attempt at drawing I made. My first mistake was using pen. I think if I had grabbed a pencil my results would have been much better with something I could erase. The nose and mouth in this sketch went sideways quickly and there was no way to recover. I got some sympathy encouragement from my oldest but this was a complete bomb.

Why share it? I am owning this “fail.”

You can’t always get everything right. Also, this is some of my first attempts at this with very little previous experience. I am thinking that there are going to be a lot of drawings that look like before I can really hone my drawing skills.

I am looking forward to continuing to get better and learning with my kids. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

– Jason