Course – Doodle-A-Day: 30 Challenges to Build Your Drawing Confidence
Ready, set, draw! Start utilising the benefits of visual storytelling in your life through this simple daily challenge, designed to build new creative habits and simple drawing skills incrementally by starting a sketchbook journal. Suitable for absolute beginners, it gives you an excuse to put pen to paper to each day. Prefer to batch your sessions in a way that suits your calendar? Well you can do that too, you get full access to all 30 bite-sized lessons from day one so you can pace your learning however you want.
No previous drawing experience required! And all you need is a pen and some paper to get started. Once you sign up, we’ll release all 30 short drawing challenges to you right away so you can do one a day for 30 days, or binge it like a Netflix new release – its entirely up to you. Each bite-sized challenge can be completed quickly but each one will teach you something about your own creativity, the science behind visual communication or the simple joy of immersing in a creative process. After 3o days you can look back through your journal and see just how far you have come.
Description
Welcome to Doodle-A-Day: 30 Challenges to Build Your Drawing Confidence! We are going to have some fun. Having the confidence to use drawing as a language is a powerful choice for unlocking greatness in your work, study and life! So well done you for showing up, that’s a big first step. Committing to a small daily practice for 30 consecutive days is an effective way to embed a new skill. It doesn’t have to be painful, it should be fun and enjoyable and that is what I have tried to create for you here. But maybe 10 minutes a day for 30 days isn’t really your style, maybe you’e more of a binge it like a Netflix show kind of person. That’s cool too, no judgement here – you do you. That is why I have built this challenge to be flexible enough to do your way – whatever that is.
How does it work?
Each challenge is bite-sized, it won’t require a huge time commitment. Each challenge should be both fun and also teach you a little something – either about yourself and your own abilities, the science behind why drawing is a powerful communication tool, or the blissful experience of creating something for the sheer pleasure of enjoying the process. Hopefully you take a little of each away with you. As soon as you enrol you will have access to all 30 challenges straight away so you can set your own pace for how you complete them. You can also return to them as often as you like.
Inside this set of challenges you will:
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Build your confidence with putting pen to paper and tune out the imposter syndrome voice
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Learn to use the symbolism of colour, shape and composition to make meaning
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Explore the process of synthesis and sensemaking by funnelling information from your brain to your paper
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Explore icon and character design
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Apply visual notetaking skills to every day tasks like list making
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Spend some time understanding ‘self’ through the creative expression of doodling
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Build a habit for journaling or sketchbooking for mental wellbeing
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And much, much more!!
What materials do I need?
You don’t need any fancy materials to take part, you may even have what you need laying around.
You will use:
- Some blank paper – loose leaf is fine but a sketchbook or journal is a great way to keep it all together and continue sketch journaling after the challenge has finished
- A blank fine liner or marker
- A few coloured markers
- A grey marker – totally not essential but you will see me adding some grey shadow lines and you may like to do the same!
- Your sense of adventure – this is going to be a fun journey
- Your sense of humour – you may not like every pen stroke you commit to paper, but you should enjoy the process and be willing to laugh along the way, its just part of the creative process
Why should I sign up for the challenge?
The fact is, using drawing for visual storytelling is making the most of the way our brains are already wired to 1) understand ourselves 2) interact with others, and, 3) make sense of the world around us. We really are wired for it – over 50% of our brains are used in visual processing and a huge percentage of our sensory receptors (some studies suggest as as much as 70%) are connected to our vision; meaning we can gain the sense of a visual scene in less than a tenth of a second. Unfortunately throughout our education and transition to the workforce many of us stop seeing ourselves as creative and we start believing that we can’t do creative things like drawing. This is a dam shame, because even if you hold the most left brain, analytical, process driven, efficiency laden job in the universe – you’d still be better at it if you brought your whole self to the table – and by that I mean bringing along the creative part that you’ve convinced yourself doesn’t exist.
The first pen stroke is the hardest, but once you get started you might just surprise yourself with what you’re capable of and just how many ways you can use this skill day to day.
It’s time to kick that old belief to the curb and start exploring this fun and effective way of understanding ourselves, interacting with others and making sense of the world.
“Just finishing this off now and it’s amazing. Thank you so much for creating something so fun and introspective. I’ve enjoyed it so much.”
– Susie
“I love the way illustrators or scribes work in visually capturing workshops or talks. Visual memories are WAY more powerful for me than anything else. So I thought I might try to learn how to doodle with some sense of reason this year. I have wanted to do the Thoughts Drawn Out course on zoom but I feel too time poor – until I discovered the 30-day drawing challenge! Super happy to finally get moving on this.”
– Shari
So let’s get started! Your first challenge awaits…
