I’m so relieved. I know it’s only been a week (well, 6 days actually) but I’m glad I’ve reached the final day of my self-imposed challenge.

I’ve been house and cat sitting this week. Having brought a few art supplies with me, I decided that a goal of drawing or painting every day would be a good use of my time. I’d heard about sketchbook challenges and how they can help to get past excuses and set a regular habit of doing art, so I decided to do one of my own. Not for a month, the intimidating amount of time often set in real sketchbook challenges, but simply one week.

But as I’ve been talking about in my posts the past few days, even a week-long commitment can be hard. I struggled with limited art supplies, new and unfamiliar supplies, a migraine and the interruptions of my feline housemates.

But I managed to draw or paint something every day, including today (which is also my cleaning & packing up day).

For reference, I used a photo I took earlier this week of one of the cats sitting in a sunny window. Today, I decided to use colored pencils instead of warercolors.

Here’s the photo:

I hesitated about whether I should even try to attempt it, but decided to push myself. That’s the point of a challenge, right?

So I closed the door to the cats and spent a couple of hours with the photo, my sketchbook and colored pencils.

Here’s the result:

Like the other pieces I’ve worked on this week, there are things that I think are ok about it and things that aren’t. Colored pencils are somewhat unforgiving–you can’t erase them and you can’t add lighter colors over darker ones. For example, I made the left eye too dark, but I’m stuck with it. There are some work-arounds with other art supplies, but I don’t have any of those with me.

When comparing the photo to the drawing, the biggest disappointment I have is about my inability to capture the light. It’s an advanced skill that I sometimes worry I’ll never achieve.

I’m glad I did this sketchbook challenge. It’s  shown me that I can be disciplined enough to create art  daily. And while it’s unlikely I’ll be able to continue a daily schedule of it when I get back to my own busy life, I know that I can carve out a couple of hours a couple of times a week. Hopefully, with that slow and steady practice my skills will improve, including finally being able to paint light.