Developing a new competancy

Having met Dr. Prasad at a Karma Circles meet up, I learnt the after a certain phase, your core competency becomes your core incompetency.

For example, a very good engineer who is made incharge of a development team might start coding more often. Thinking that it is her duty to lead the team. However this core competency of hers is now a core incompetency.

Her job now is not to code more, but to be responsible for everyone else on her team.

Having learnt that, I've planned to challenge what I already know, and learn a new skill — sketching. I don't need to be the master of sketching, only a jack. So, in this 30 day challenge starting from today, I'll post a sketch (or illustration) for the next 30 days continuously.

The outcome of this will be :

• Me setting up a blog (with all these sketches and past work)
• Writing more often
• Getting a dribbble.com invite
• Developing a new skill
• Learning to give up on competencies to make space for new wisdom

Day 1 — December 5, 2016

Found this amazing scene — Drink by the pool by Paulius on dribbble. I feel that what I drew is pathetic, and hope that it'll improve after I'm done with this.

Day 2 — December 6, 2016

Having done a bootilicious drawing yesterday, today I wanted to be more disciplined. So I chose to draw something related to meditation or war.

I found this Samurai Illustration by Stevan Rodic on dribbble.

I strongly felt the urge to use a pencil and eraser (but didn't have one). Will try to bring one along tomorrow.

Day 3 — December 7, 2016

Today, I tried to find a pencil and eraser but wasn't able to. I got a pack of crayons instead. While searching for something to draw, I really wanted to draw a more detailed samurai. Wasn't able to find one on dribbble.com (maybe if someone gives me an invite, then I might make one an post it).

I settled for Kal EI by James OConnell on dribbble.com.

My sketch was a little off balance, because the lower part went out of proportion. The {S} didn't turn out as well as I hoped.

Day 4 — December 8, 2016

I really wanted to do a more detailed samurai today, maybe because of the book I'm reading right now. However, still not being able to find one, I settled for Fox by Igor_Eezo. (Apart from the drawing, I also left CFEL today.)

Day 5 — December 9, 2016

I was thinking about drawing an elephant like the one in Postgres App logo. Got a little late and was tired after day's work. Settled for a simpler elephant from google search.

And this time, I drew it on a whiteboard at the office (This looked so terrible that I erased it immediately after I took a snap of it.)

Day 6 — December 14, 2016

I didn't draw for 4 days straight. Got stuck in work and meetings. So today all I did was sketching. I started up with this amazing sketch of a Dancer by simc.

Day 7— December 14, 2016

Another sketch was that of a lady in Sitting Pose by Ryan Putnam.

Here's what I came up with (probably the best attempt yet).

Day 8 — December 14, 2016

Was in full form today, when decided to draw this Corvette 1963 Split Window by Konrad Szuster.

Day 9 — December 27, 2016 — Back after long

Wasn't able to get going with my sketches. Back again. I had a specific sketch by Elena-Greta Apostol (this is not the one). I'll do that one later.

Following is what I came up with.

Day 10 — March 26, 2017 — Had almost given up

But came back before starting to take up a new skill. This logo illustration came from some place I don't recall. For sure, this is inspired and not original.

Day 11 — August 2, 2017 I thought I'd never be able to finish this

But something brought me back and a quick google search showed that I wanted to sketch the lazy girl by Cameron Mark.

The original by Cameron Mark on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/p/BSwTU9iD_5x/

Day 12— August 23, 2017 I'm really terrible at drawing hand gestures :P

Source : Random google image search

So terrible that I gave up after 3 attempts.

Day 13 and 14 — August 25, 2017

Can't believe that I'm just 1 day away from my half way point. Though we are already behind schedule, this gives me hope that I'll be able to publish this someday.

This time, instead of going for a picture to imitate, we created a logo for (my father's shop called) RR Steels on day 13. This was a process that was showcased in a youtube video. I'm not able to recall the author. But anyways here's the logo :

The idea here was to depict the "R" in the form of a steel coil resting on a base. It has turned out well so far. Following is the raw sketch version of the same :

We had to let go of the base as the output looked better without it. Given that this was my first real attempt on making a logo, I'm happy with the output.

Day 14 was the day of Drawception. I had placed my sunglasses on the table and I drew the scene on the notebook as I saw it.

I drew what I saw, literally :P

Day 15 !!!! — August 26, 2017

There is a slight improvement in my work. Now I've started to pay more attention to shadows and smudge. The next sketch that I imitated was drawn originally by melmadedooks on instagram

Original by melmadedooks at https://www.instagram.com/p/BFooZ_AjzvC/

This brings me to the half way point. And it's best to publish this before moving forward.

I tried taking utmost care to attribute the original artists here, but wasn't able to attribute all of them. So unless explicitly mentioned, all work presented here is just an imitation.