Drawing Day

You know you’ve always wanted to, to grasp a piece of charcoal and strike your creativity out across the world in a million shades of grey. To pick up a pencil and create the world in your head on the page in front of you, maybe its crayons that’s your thing. Whatever your medium, Drawing Day is dedicated to the artist inside of us and encouraging it to come out, and then letting it flourish every day of the year to follow!

History of Drawing Day

Drawing day is there to remind us of the time when we were too tied up in the amazing and beautiful things that came out of our imagination and onto the page to be self-conscious about them. We weren’t worried about how good we were or weren’t, we just knew that it was time to take our inner worlds and bring them out in glorious color. Some of us were amazing, to begin with, some of us got there drawing after painful drawing, and some of us let the artist within us die out under a wave of “not being good enough.”

Drawing Day reminds you that everything inside you is worthwhile and worthy to be shared with the world. It’s also there to bring much-needed appreciation and awareness to illustrators and artists. Anywhere you see a picture, from a business card to a beautiful mural on a painting, to every birthday card you’ve ever bought, an artist was designed in making it. The best way we can thank these intrepid creative souls is by picking up the pencil and making some noise for the lost and forgotten artists of the world. And maybe find a few more in the process.

This event is also a great chance to introduce a unique kind of treatment. If you have autistic children or depressed members of your household, drawing will act as a form of emotional therapy. It allows them to take their mind off their worries and focus on themselves. They say, the eyes are a window to the soul. Drawing is the door. A picture speaks a thousand words and drawings will act as a bridge of expression, transporting them to a better place mentally.

How to celebrate Drawing Day

It’s not rocket science (although a rocket can be your first drawing), all you need is a pencil and paper to get going. Don’t fear the blank page, let it fear you! To start off easy, study the things close to you. A table lamp, sofa, a pet or perhaps birds in your garden. Get your wrist flowing and the cognitive part of your brain to link what you see to your physical body. Let your pencil run wild, don’t worry about making mistakes. Drawing is kind of like writing, as in, sometimes you just need to let the words flow out without stopping to fully flesh-out an idea.

Once you feel loosened up, now it’s time to get serious. When you begin to open up your heart and mind you will let out your true energy and nature. What are the emotions you feel the most? Some of the most vividly haunting paintings ever have been about everyday emotions that we go through.

One of the most iconic paintings that illustrate despair, sadness and desperation, is ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch. Sold for an incredible $120 million in New York, 2012, it’s a painting that started off as a very simple sketch. The first layers of any paintings are drawings and contrary to what you might think, they play a large role in deciding the brush strokes. When you sketch, perform with a light touch so you can go over the same area over and over, to really refine shapes, lines and shades.

Sitting down with your children to draw with them, will give them the confidence to let out a side of them they would be embarrassed or shy about, with anyone else. No matter if your kids are below 10 or in their late teens, ask them to join you in this amazing event. Be prepared to lead by example and make a few laugh-out-loud bad drawings before you really put some effort into your pencil strokes.

Diamond in the rough

Some of the best artists to ever exist have come from poor backgrounds. Drawing Day is for everyone and nobody should be excluded because they don’t have the equipment. Go onto an art supplies website and buy as much as you can. Make sure you get different varieties of the same type of product for different effects. Buying sketch pads, drawing pencils, pastel crayons and painting kits for the needy children in your neighborhood may spawn a diamond in the rough. A child may become a famous artist because of the things you donated to your local community center or school.