Last year I started getting back into the habit of drawing just for the sake of it, after a long time doing it only for commissions or specific projects. It’s a classic: before you know it, you’ve stopped drawing for fun and now it’s just something you do for professional commissions – still enjoying it, but to meet a client’s specific needs.
To get back into the habit, sometimes all you need to do is pick up a sketchbook and draw whatever comes to mind, but that can be a bit paralysing if you’re not feeling inspired; in those cases, it helps me to set myself some restrictions.
That’s how I started this series of drawings in Procreate, in which I use just one colour and one layer. Every day, after finishing work, I’d create one of these characters (by the way, thanks Jacobo for the name) and sometimes, at the weekends, lying on the sofa, I’d do a few more. I say ‘used to’ because although for a couple of months these characters have been my passion and my creative refuge, I think I’ve now shifted my focus to other things; it’s something that happens to me a lot. Perhaps I’ll revisit them at some point, but only if I feel like it.
For now, I’ve put together a mini fanzine featuring some of them, which I use as an example in my pop-up fanzine workshops; perhaps I’ll make one that brings them all together.
