The Guardian Project: 365 days of Illustrations!

I love books since I was born. Writing and crafting stories has always been my greatest passions, as well as drawing. And although I could find tons of excellent advice and books explaining how to weave a decent story for a picture book, I still didn’t know how to develop my illustration skills.

There are no illustration courses in my city, and I couldn’t decide on what books to pick or which online classes could offer me the training I need. Not knowing where to start, I was sketching everything I saw, picking tips and tidbits of information here and there, drawing like a headless cucaracha. No matter how hard I tried, I knew all that wasn’t taking me anywhere.

Fortunately, last week I found The Guardian’s How to Draw… series, with piles of easy to follow step-by-step guides, prepared by some of the most amazing children's book illustrators in the world, and that treasure-trove inspired me to come up with this project!

The Project

Every day for a year, from February 1, 2015 to January 31, 2016, I will make an illustration inspired on what I’ll learn from each of these guides. So far there are 94 lessons, and they publish about 6 new tutorials every month. According to my calculations, if I take about 4 lessons every week, I’ll be able to catch up with all the lessons released so far, plus the ones that will be released throughout the year (though these calculations might be wrong, because numbers are really not my thing).

So that means that every week I’ll spend four days following the instructions on my daily illustration lesson from the How to Draw… series, and the other three days I’ll be doing some crazy experiments based on such lessons, like mixing two or more of the week’s styles and exercises.

I’ll try to find my style throughout the whole project, which means that I’ll be adding my own flavor to the illustrations, besides exploring and experimenting with different materials and techniques. 

The only rule is that I must follow all of The Guardian’s How to Draw… guides, making an illustration inspired on such guides each and every day, for 365 days, and post it on my blog.

Throughout this mad venture, I’d love to hear your comments (and I won’t object if you’re willing to cheer and hearten me along the way!). Don’t be shy! It will be great to know your thoughts, ideas and suggestions about my illustrations. 

Cheers!