Summary of exercise: "Make a drawing of your own crossed feet, stressing accurate contour and detail. Use line only."

I wouldn’t usually include unfinished blobs like on the left-hand page, but in this case I love how it shows that I got better at things even in the relatively short time I spent working on this exercise. Even better: when I scanned this and did some post-processing I was slightly baffled that I drew this! It’s far from a masterpiece, but the simple fact that I managed to recognizably draw a pair of shoes is awesome. And I do mean “fills me with awe”, yes.

So! What did I learn?

• Drawing takes time. The suggested time for this exercise is 30 minutes, and I’d say that was about right for me.
• I could try to draw in harder lines rather than the wimpy sketch lines.
• Yes, I CAN learn how to draw! Just the first two pages have given me enough confidence to say that with confidence. As said before, I don’t expect to be a popular comic artist by the end of the year, but my goal of being not absolutely rubbish at drawing is at the very least viable.

It’s too early to tell you I’d recommend the book to anyone who thinks they’re too thick to draw. So far I’m pretty happy though! The Keys aren’t about “how do I draw a face” or “how do I make tree branches look natural”, but focus on what I’d call internal factors – they’re about you, not about the subjects. How can you look at things?  How can you look at your work? Everything I’ve seen so far helps me get over the roadblocks in my mind, created by years of careful self-criticism.

I’m not sure how I’m going to name the posts yet, or whether I’ll even write something for every exercise in the book. As soon as I’ve got more than one of them done I might start worrying about that The important thing is that I keep drawing, how to document it is secondary.

A bold attempt at drawing.

For a very long time I have wanted to learn how to draw. I’m terrible at it, I really am. I’m decent with technical stuff – flat, precise, with rulers and all that. I love a good mechanical pencil, but the more.. artful side of it all is something I struggle with. For reference, to the left you’ll see my most recent (say, 2006) attempt at a face. I’ve tried geometric shapes and the like since, but nothing really works out. As an avid webcomic reader I’m regularly reminded of the fact that drawing is awesome, and after seeing yet another bunch of wonderful sketches I decided to Change Things.

Today a book came in the mail that I ordered on Sunday.  This book is Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson. Supposedly it’s absolutely wonderful for people who are terrible at drawing or think they’ll never learn. Starting this week I intend to go through the book and practice, based on the advice given in the form of the 55 keys to drawing.

I don’t know that anyone will be here to watch me, but I’ll post scans and descriptions on this very weblog to document the whole affair. With some luck you’ll see me grow into a slightly less crummy artist!

I am no meteorologist, so I don’t mean to improve on the forecasts. I think it may be interesting to look into the actual accuracy. I don’t have a lot of experience with statistical analysis either, but collecting some data and graphing it should be doable.

The plan

For a year I will collect forecast data for 1, 3 and 7 days ahead. At the same time I will collect weather reports (that is, actual measurements). Multiple locations and weather services may be used, I’m not sure. At the end of that year all the data can be compared to eachother and conclusions may be drawn.

I imagine this has been done before, but I’d really like to see the data for myself.

The data

The only thing I’m pretty sure about is that I’ll draw report data from METAR. I don’t know where I’ll be getting forecast data, but preferably from two or three easily parseable sources.

Update 15-2-2012: Finding a source for forecasts that is easily parsable seemed impossible, until someone came up with the bright idea to look into RSS feeds.  Yahoo’s weather service seems excellent, just have to find something that’s published by something that’s actually in the Netherlands.  Might be a while until I get around to this, though.