Good Morning friends!
Today I am starting a 100 day project to get into a habit of something I’ve been wanting to do for ages, that is working in a sketchbook daily. I am a sketchbook hoarder. I always buy sketchbooks with the intention of drawing on them every day and then after a few days I get bored of it or start missing my watercolor paper and go back to it. I’ve a stack of semi-used sketchbook pile looking at me right now while I am contemplating making a sketchbook by myself so it finally has the type of paper and feel that I like (Hello procrastination!)
I’ve watched dozens of sketchbook keeping classes and tutorials but they all revolve around mindfulness or prompts etc which didn’t resonate with me. Like if I am not in a good mindset what do I do? How do I push through? And more than half the prompts given in those classes don’t interest me either. Then thanks to Social media there is another added pressure of making something pretty enough in a sketchbook that people can oooh and ahhh over. This kind of defeats the purpose of keeping a sketchbook doesn’t it?
So I came up with something super simple that I can do. I’ll set a timer for 30 minutes and start drawing in a sketchbook without thinking about the outcome. If I want to keep on drawing after the 30 minutes then I’ll continue. I’ll consider it like the drills we do in Calligraphy. And I’ll do it before opening up my social media so that I don’t get distracted by it. Then I’ll write about what I learned through it. And lastly I’ll post about it.
Day 1 of 100 Day Sketchbook Project:
Today I wanted to keep it less intimidating since it’s my first day and make something that I love to draw. So I drew clouds! Ever since I was a kid I used to love looking at clouds and draw them too. Clouds and flowers were my only random doodles I used to do. Those fluffy adorable cotton candy reminiscent shapes have my ❤️
I opened google to see some pictures of clouds since I didn’t want to open the phone and get distracted (I’ve dozens of cloud pictures on my phone at any given time to sketch from). Turns out there are more than 100 types of clouds! Wow!! I didn’t know that. I always thought that it’s all random and the breaks I see here and there are because if airplanes flying through them. How uninformed was I?
Although more than 100 types of clouds exist, they can be grouped into 10 different categories according to their shape and position in the sky.
Low altitude clouds are the ones that lie below 6500 feet. They are called Cumulus, Stratus and Stratocumulus.
Middle clouds are the ones that are formed between 6500 and 20,000 feet. They are called Altocumulus, Nimbostratus and Altostratus
High altitude clouds are the ones that are formed above 20,000 feet! They are called cirrus, cirrocumulus and cirrostratus.
Lastly, there is Cumulonimbus, which goes across lower, middle and upper altitudes. It starts like cumulus but then grow into a big cauliflower type shape!
That’s all for today. Now you’ve as much cloud knowledge as I do. I've spent an hour drawing them and the same amount of time writing about them here. You can go and make some fun clouds now too.