Student work: Hugh Hadfield

31 Days, 54 Sketches

Sketch-a-day is the name of a community of people that create and share drawings and sketches every day. During January I committed to doing a sketch every day for at least one-month, partly because the beginning of the new decade seemed like an auspicious time to commit to something, and partly because I was intrigued to see what I could achieve.

Making a series of observational reportage sketches also fed nicely into my coursework, (I’m currently studying Illustration 2).

The rules I set myself were simple:

1. I had to produce at least one sketch a day every day for at least a month
2. The outputs had to be posted to Instagram using the hashtag #sketchaday

The second rule was probably the most important. Posting publicly seemed to strengthen my resolve, and because it was public, I was motivated to give it my best shot; not putting in the effort was not optional.

I kept it going for 40-days and then made a conscious decision to stop in order to refocus my attention on my studies.

I found the experience incredibly valuable for a number of reasons:

• Spending between one and two hours a day just drawing meant I was putting in the hours, gaining experience and getting more confident (and hopefully better) through practice.
• Having to make a picture whatever, meant that I tried things I otherwise wouldn’t have: I started attending a weekly life drawing class again (at the wonderful Westminster Quaker Meeting House in Covent Garden run by Soho Life Drawing [https://www.soholifedrawing.com/ ]), and began attending the Friday night Drop-in Drawing sessions at The National Portrait Gallery [https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/fridaylates ]. I stopped by the side of a muddy road in the middle of Cambridgeshire to draw an amazing landscape whilst my fingers became numb in the driving winter wind.
• I created quite a large portfolio of work over a very short period of time.
• It challenged me to be creative about the selection and treatment of subjects. 

Probably the most valuable thing it forced me to do was practice drawing people. I quickly realised that being in London during the day where I was working was the best opportunity to make interesting pictures. 

Many of my lunchtimes were spent people watching in the Barbican Centre with sketchbook in hand, doing the 20-people in 20-minutes exercise.

You can see all of the sketches I produced during January in a visual diary format here [https://hughhadfield.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/31-days-54-sketches-1.pdf ], or if you’re on Instagram they’re here [https://www.instagram.com/hughhadfield/ ]

On reflection I’m really pleased that I decided to put in the time and effort to complete this prokect and would highly recommend it to anyone. 

Learning Log: https://hughhadfield.com/