Today on my table.

Making gifts gets me going on any day so I am off to drop these in the mail box. 

What is on my table?

Asterisks:
* Timer. This is one of the main wisdom of my life: time needs to be measured and recorded. I use the times when I am on the roll, I use it when I am in a rut. Here is how it works: turn it on - just for 5 minutes if that is all you can or all you have - and do something without interruption, without switching to other things, without questioning. Then do it again. Especially useful in the current situation.
** A little while ago I realized that I love my materials and hoard them a bit but don't use them as much as I could. As a result, I do not get as much joy out of them and feel guilty for spending money and for taking space and time on picking them. But if I get my joy out of them - there is no guilt and there is art. Here is my current solution: I created these two boxes. I put all my pens in box number one. And after I drew with a pen I would move it to box number two. This way I started rotating through all my pens, realized that some I can let go because I don't want to come back to them but others I love and I forgot about some of my pens completely! Now I go through everything in box #1 and then move all the pens out of #2 into #1 and start all over. 
I am working on somewhat similar solutions for other materials - I will try to take a picture soon.

Weekend or not?

One of the interesting things for me to figure out is how to differentiate weekdays from the weekends while we all are cooped up in the house all the time.
To make a weekend different I decided to not follow the schedule at all and instead of a walk around the block we went to a special place on both days - a bit further. Also - cooking something a little more special was helpful.

I sketched with just ink during the walk. Park was filled with people and everyone standing / looking at birds or just hanging there took too much space on the path for others to pass safely so added color at home.
Drawing mess on my table is one of my long-standing traditions and taking a few minutes to do this helps me to start doing things - whatever needs to be done. Motivation comes from the action - and just putting pen on paper and recording whatever is the first thing I see is the way I go.

All in all, it worked and the weekend was different. But on Monday I found out that switching back is not that easy :)

Today's spread from my sketchbook: lists, schedules and drawing the same thing over and over.

I always treated my sketchbook as a diary, a place where I pay attention to my life. These days are not different but with more observations about myself.

I also noticed that I return to the same sketch more or sketch the same subjects many times (I often do this - but today I scheduled breaks in my workday around drawing this cyclamen).

And I make lists - things that I need to have in my day to feel that is was a good one. Things that I have to remember to do when this is over. etc.

Spot the differences?

How did my "ONE WEEK 100 PEOPLE": Sketching Challenge (March 9-13, 2020) go.

Well, this year I was prepared (here is my plan).
But things didn't go as I planned.
And I did draw over 100 people but I cannot share quite a few of them. I knew that would be the case and planned to draw way more. But as coronavirus spread, the world around me was getting smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer places were available for sketching and more and more things had to be done before the inevitable shutdown of all the normal life.
So - here are a few of the 100 people:

Why I cannot share some of my sketches?
Those who follow my blog for some time probably noticed that there are no more sketches of the family members. This happened as per their request. I am drawing them daily but no longer making those sketches and notes public. (This means that I will not be posting a lot of things about my time during the quarantine - but I am thinking as to how to go about it).
Here is an example:

And I am very grateful for those who video chat with me regularly and are OK with me sharing these sketches (these people are also known as my endless supporters - my parents :)