Hammerhead

Recently my youngest child, Henry, had to stay home from school with a cold. Given the design and illustration work load facing me that day, this required a bit of a head adjustment on my part. Ok, so not going to get much done on projects today. Sigh.

But turns out Henry really wanted to spend his recuperative time drawing. Drawing sharks. Again, not my top choice. No “draw a shark” on my to do list.

But we pulled out some How To Draw books that would provide some references for him and allow him to work fairly independently. Maybe, I thought, I could still get some of my own work done. His excitement over his creations became so infectious though that in short order I found myself with him drawing shark after shark.

Since this wasn’t a sketch for any particular project, it was freeing just to sketch loosely and try new approaches. So lesson learned—best to greet those unexpected schedule changes as an opportunity to do something new and bring that experience back to the work.