It's a popular theory that it takes 28 days to form a new habit. Alas, in my case, it seems to take a lot longer than that. 88 days have passed since I started this drawing practice, and it has reached the point where I do draw something every day. It's become routine to pick up the pencil each morning, after coffee and blog-reading but before anything else.
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Still, I don't think it's an actual habit yet. I feel that any little change in my routine, any distraction, could disrupt the practice, and I might not get back to it. Perhaps it needs another month.
I don't think my drawing has improved at all. Sometimes it's awkward, sometimes it flows, but there doesn't seem to be any way of predicting which it will be. My learning pattern tends toward sudden leaps after a long season on a plateau, so I hope to see a change soon.
I am discovering a little about the use of pencil, which is something my spotty art-education missed. I suppose my art college teachers assumed we had all done that in high school, but my school had no art program, and I lived in a town where you couldn't buy drawing pencils. Willow charcoal sticks were available, which I used and loved, but this made me very resistant to the harder pencils when I was asked to use them. I thought life was way too short for shading in teeny-tiny lines with an 8-H. Nobody told me you could expose a long length of lead and use it on its side. I always thought those pale leads were terribly fragile, but they are actually stronger than the big soft leads.
