This is the demo sketch of a Horned Owl brought home from a Clayton Home School Pencil Drawing Class. Classes are only 55 minutes long so I am not always able to finish the subject we choose in that amount of time.

Finishing What You Start

But, finishing what you start on your own time is truly worthwhile for any artist. And, NOT accumulating stacks of unfinished sketches and paintings in a corner of my studio is a great lifelong goal for me.

Afterschool, donating 30 more minutes on this sketch at home looks like this (below).

It is worth it to finish your sketches? Yes.

Check out another older blog post about finishing…

With just a little bit of effort you change this sketch’s destination and also improve your skill level as an artist.

Adding 1/2 hour

• Changes this drawings destination of being laid in a stack of papers, and later thrown away later, to becoming a treasure worth putting up on the wall.
• Helps the artist in you to practice and learn how to finish anything you start. Abandon the half way done mind-set. Improve your artist skills by forcing yourself to choose which details and rendering styles you will use.

Give it your best and you will never have to wonder about it later on. We in the creative fields tend to easily abandon a project before actually finishing it. It is simply in our nature. It is easy to change this tendency in ourselves by resisting the urge yo throw more into that pile. Instead, practice finishing something and experience the joy of accomplishing a job well done.