The next morning art project is about ..... portraits!

A little while ago I finished my last morning art project which was a small cahier style sketchbook filled with collages. I really enjoyed that project and for my next one I wanted to do something equally enjoyable but different. I have a whole list of possible projects to do for 30 minutes in the morning, so I probably won't run out of ideas anytime soon. My problem is one of the luxury of choice. What to do first?

After some back and forth I decided to do a book of portraits! Again I am using a Seawhite of Brighton Eco A5 sketchbook with 32 pages, so that means that over the coming weeks I have 32 portraits to draw/paint or whatever. The only rule is that it has to be a portrait, the medium or style is up to me.

Here are the first five I finished:

The first two were drawn with a Pentel Pocket Brush and filled in with watercolour. The other three were drawn with special multicoloured pencils made by Koh-i-noor. I really enjoy the simple style of those.

For models I used my trusted mailorder catalogue girls. I may look onto the internet or magazines for other sources, but it's really not that important to me. The practicing of portrait drawing is what's important.

Now as I have moved into this new sketchbook I have also decided to take a bit of different approach to my morning art. This is mostly done out of necessity. See when I want to do my morning art on workdays or when I have to catch the morning ferry I have to get up at five. So far I have done this for about two and a half years and it is starting to catch up with me. I am not a morning person in the first place and so far it has only been my love for this practice that has made it possible for me to keep it up. But frankly I'm getting a little tired (literally) of having to get up so early several days a week to do my art. So I have decided to only do it on the mornings when I have the time to at least get enough sleep before I get to arting. It's basically a self care thing.

So my productivity when it comes to morning art will be a bit less from now on, but I should still be able to do three to four portraits a week and that's fine with me. We'll just see how it goes.
I think it's important to evaluate your priorities and routines from time to time to see if it's all still working for you. Ultimately the welfare of my body is more important than productivity, no matter how much I like the latter.

Hope you will enjoy coming along with me for this new morning art project and wishing you all a wonderful and artsy day!