Of the two intentions I set for 2024, I am succeeding at one of them: I draw nearly every day. My friend and team lead, Kristina — the one who got me hooked on drawing to begin with — sent me an Instagram message to tell me about a January, 10-minutes a day, anti-perfectionist 30-day drawing habit… community? course? Substack? I don’t know what to call it, but it’s run by Wendy MacNaughton, the illustrator of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. After first saying, “but I’m not a subscriber!,” then landing a free 30 day trial*, I said hell yes! And I started drawing, fearlessly. Because the whole point is to have fun and stop editing yourself.

As with many online drawing lessons I’ve dipped my toes into, this one introduced us first to line. Or at least I thought it did. I can’t find a corresponding lesson, but I have this drawing of different kinds of lines that I’m sure came from WendyMac’s lessons:

From there, I set a timer for 10 minutes for each assignment, turned off my brain, and drew based on the prompts she gave. It reminded me a lot of the talk I gave at WordCamp US, and then again at WordCamp Europe: Publish in 10 minutes per day. The keys are 1) to have a prompt to work from, and 2) to reject perfectionism. Set a timer, let it rip, don’t worry, and boom, you have a blog post (or a drawing).

One of the keys to having fun creatively is to not be precious or embarrassed by what you’ve made. So in that spirit, I’m posting the drawings from my first week with WendyMac. The theme of the week was doodling. Doodling is fun. It’s low pressure, there’s no comparison to reality, and it’s easy to flow with. I’ve found I really enjoy lines, and I like to doodle on airplanes. I turn on some music, or the fireplace video if available, and let my pen wander. Doodling passes the time while also putting me in a flow state. I found some entrancing doodlers on Instagram, and I am inspired.

The first assignment of the 30-day habit was to draw, in 10 minutes, what I want to do more of and less of in 2024. My More list is basically stuff I like to do for fun: listen to music, enjoy nature, travel, go for walks or hikes. And now, draw.

Below are my doodles. I have so much to learn 😂. For starters, I’ve learned about paper, and about not drawing on both sides of lightweight paper. I’ve also learned that 10 minutes is not very long. I think that’s the trick to it: 10 minutes is a short amount of time. It’s the starting that matters. Committing to 10 minutes helps you get started. There were a couple of days in week 2 where I said screw the 10 minutes, I’ve started, and I’m having fun, and I’m going to keep going. But the 10 minutes is also to give constraints and say, hello, this isn’t a masterpiece and don’t spend 2 weeks on it. Just 10 minutes. You don’t need to be perfect. Loosen up. Have fun.