Motivation Station

Some people might look at my uploads and ask, “What the heck are you doing, making art in Sketcher when you have a perfectly good, brand-new Adobe Photoshop CS4 with all the bells and whistles?  Why limit yourself to four transparent layers, four hours, and limited drawing space?”

Excellent question, and one I often ask myself when I become enraged at Sketcher (which happens very frequently).  Here’s the thing about Sketcher – it makes me draw.  It’s a motivational tool.

I did not really give Sketcher a chance back on my old laptop, with Adobe Photoshop 7 inherited from my older cousin (no extra licenses). But then, when I got my new laptop to take to college, I suddenly was Photoshop-less.  The only way I was going to draw anything, since I am abysmal at real media, was to go on Sketcher.    For a period of about five months, I drew exclusively on Sketcher.  And funnily enough, I found I was drawing more often.  Here are some of the reasons I adore Sketcher, and why it motivates me to draw:

1. Four-hour time limit.  It means that I can set aside one chunk of my day, and know that I won’t go over it because I’m too engrossed in what I’m doing.  It’s also helped me with my completion speed.
2. Four layers = less complexity.  Complex pics take me forever, and I inevitably become frustrated or bored and they die when I lose interest in them.  Photoshop is a TRAP!  It makes me start huge projects that I will never finish.  Sketcher frees me from that.
3. Painting.  Sketcher is so much fun to paint in, and I’ve become so used to the settings that any other program earns my wrath for not having Sketcher’s simplicity.  I cannot paint in Photoshop the way I do in Sketcher, and as for lining in Photoshop?  Ugh, forget it!
4. Human contact. Or cyber-human-contact, anyway.  I can talk to other users while I’m working, and if I get art block, the conversation will usually help me figure out what to draw.  I also can do collabs, which are a lot of fun.

There are probably more reasons why I prefer Sketcher, but I’ve noticed that reset just happened and I really want to draw something tonight.  So I will bid Coalf adieu and hop over there to have some Sketchery fun!