Back to the Drawing Board

Sketch of the Day is making a comeback in January of 2011! This post includes a little reflection, a little explanation of the new “rules” of Sketch of the Day 2011, and a massive gallery of previous sketches. If you’d like to follow my sketches daily, you can always come to henrynahurski.com and subscribe, join my Facebook group, or follow me on twitter.

A Brief History

To help explain where I want to take “Sketch of the Day” in the future, I feel it’s necessary to explain a little bit of its past.

Halfway through July of 2010, I decided that in addition to a new website, that I wanted to start a daily sketch blog, not only because it would be good practice and let me experiment with different techniques, but as a means of marketing myself and bringing attention to my work

Well, for those first few months it was a great success, I learned a lot (you can even see improvements in the work in the massive gallery below). I also saw a night and day difference as I shared these sketches on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, and the kind of traffic it produced.

Unfortunately, just as the project was really starting to take flight, the security of my website was compromised in the middle of October. I had to shut it down and start all over. This is where Sketch of the Day ended as well.

Back to the Drawing Board

So with everything I’ve learned from from this ‘test run’, it is time to go “Back to the Drawing Board”. I’ll be creating a sketch daily from Jan 01, 2011 to Dec 31st, 2011. That is 1 drawing a day, 7 a week, and 365 in one year! I’ve always been inspired by this process of pure creation, and with the kind of progress that I made in just about 3 months this year, I can’t imagine what I’ll achieve in 12, and I can’t wait to get started!

The Rules

These are my new rules for Sketch of the Day to facilitate a better structure and a more cohesive collection. (Feel free to call me out if I break any one of these!)

1. A ‘Sketch’ is not necessarily defined as ‘drawing’, but rather a scrap or idea, so a variety of media is encouraged, including: drawing, painting, photography, collage, etc.
2. The Sketch has to be started and completed within one day and may not be continued over multiple days, hence: ‘-of the Day’
3. It has to be posted on the day it is completed before midnight – 11:59 P.M. CST
4. It has to be in a 16:9 format, but may be cropped or framed within that space
5. Original file size must be 16×9 in. at 300 DPI (hint-hint), while the posted size is 960×530 px at 72 DPI
6. From the two previous formats of Sketch of the Day, I’ve learned that: A) Forced boarders are not a good thing. B) The big and centered logo was in the way and distracting. For the new format, the “Henry Nahurski” wordmark will be small and discreetly placed in the bottom left-hand corner of the image.

The Gallery

As mentioned above, below is a massive gallery of all the sketches I’ve done previously, check them out! The majority of them are digital painting in Photoshop, which I plan to do more of, in addition to more typography and pencil sketches.

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