8x8 Project

 In January 2013, I officially started tangling on YouTube. My intention was to create a drawing a day on my channel. HA! I quickly realized that this was not going to be possible. It's hard to think of what to draw, especially when you feel like you have a deadline to do it by. I still want to do a tangle a day but after this experiment as I was starting my channel, I know that the tangles would have to be very small.

This 8x8" drawing was done over 3 videos so I could cover 3 days. (How Sneaky!) It took maybe 4 hours to do all together. At this point, I still really didn't know what I was doing. I was still trying to find my "voice" so to speak, and I was learning patterns. I decided to create this circular template that's broken up into different blocks. I guess this is like a "sampler" of me trying different patterns.

When I finished the drawing, I wasn't sure if I wanted to color it or shade it. I was still not experienced with either, but wanted to do something more than just draw the patterns. In the end, I decided to just shade the drawing.

When I was all done and uploaded the videos I thought this drawing was soooooo cool! I was sure I would never be able to draw anything so intricate ever again. I couldn't believe I spent an entire 4 hours drawing just one picture! Of course now 4 hours is average for a drawing. It's kind of interesting thinking about how the amount of time on a drawing has changed so drastically in just 2 years.

Looking at the video again before posting this blog, I realize just how amateur this looks compared to what I do now. Maybe in 2 more years I will think what I do now looks amateur.

At this point I think I had about 100 subscribers and wasn't making money on my channel. It takes a really really long time to start making any money on YouTube. I really didn't care that I wasn't making anything. I had my novels and I was editing books for others as a full time job. Tangles were just something fun to do. I just figured if I was going to draw anyway, I may as well record it and throw it on YouTube. I told my daughter, Allison, that my goal by the end of the year was to reach 500 subscribers. I thought it was an unrealistic expectation to be honest.

I think I might try doing something like this again. I like the idea, but I know I could make it look much nicer than this. Here's the "Finishing" video. Most of the drawing is done but all of the videos are up if you want to watch it evolve. I really don't like making videos into different parts anymore. I like watching the picture evolve in one video.