Favorite Part

It’s been a few days so I wanted to post a quick snapshot of the progress on my current drawing.

Right now I’m just filling in the background and honestly, despite it being tedious, it’s the part of the drawing I like doing the most. When I’m inking solid backgrounds it’s like slipping into a meditative state where I don’t have to think much. I’m not worrying about whether the subject matter looks the way I intended it to look or anything of the sort. All I have to be mindful of is whether the stippling is smooth or not, which is easy to correct if it isn’t.

I also noticed that creating drawings where I get to fill in backgrounds like this allows me to get comfortable with the drawing first and ease any anxiety I might feel because even though I’ve been doing this for a while now, each new drawing causes me a certain amount of anxiety. It’s like going on a first date over and over again. You’re excited, nervous and worried about messing it up. So spending a few days just quietly stippling the background lets me get comfortable and familiar with my drawing.

In the process of working on the background I’ve changed things just slightly. In my initial base drawing I had drawn four rays of light coming down. I’ve now reduced it to just one main ray, which I’m still not sure if I’m going to leave in or not. I might just go with having a halo of light around the dove’s head. I’m still working it out in my mind so we’ll see.