I started an Instagram account this summer upon the suggestion of one of my Disney co-workers. Please forgive me if you’ve heard this story previously, but loosely it went like this:
Me: [drawing on the paper table covering at Market City Cafe, Burbank during a group lunch outing.]
Alex: Dude, you should share that on Instagram. Do you have an Instagram account?
Me: No, I don’t.
Alex: Dude, you should.
Me: [scrolling through the app store on my smart phone.]
Huh, well the app is free.
At that lunch, I took a few photos of what I drew. Later that afternoon I downloaded the app, started an account,
monstergram7, and my first two Instagram shares were spaghetti-slurping Little Tuffy and Jessie the cowgirl.
And them not much else. I really didn’t know what to do with it.
On a whim I tried a one-day-only, social media suggestion box called “
What Shall I Draw Today?” (WSIDT). On Sunday, June 28th, I open the doors through this blog, Facebook and Instagram with little fanfare. I received five suggestions. This was a lot easier than my average Sunday comic convention load.
In July, I posted some random things including a sample of life figure drawing, an Independence Day commemorative and something for a baby shower.
Experimentation continued with a day at Disneyland on it’s official 60th birthday, July 17th, 2015 during which I
doodled in an autograph book.
For my follow-up
WSIDT, I posted notices a week ahead of the Sunday. The list of suggestions was quite a bit longer.
In August, another Instagram experiment was an hour-long doodling session. My parameters were to do as many doodles that I could fit on to one page, with one pen, within one hour. It’s not like any art-school exercise I’ve ever had, but as such it probably would have been a good one. Pen doodling is useful as an exercise, because without resorting to erasing or digital “undos,” you’re forced to make decisions and work with or accept mistakes.
I closed August with a sneak attack
WSIDT, which is more like 27-hours starting at 12 am Eastern Time and ending the next day at 12 am Pacific Time. Part of my time that Sunday was occupied by completing actual commissions, so I was doing much more drawing than that represented by my
monstergram7 shares.
Lessons learned:
1) How to change privacy settings per Facebook posts, which is helpful since I’ve been sharing Instagram posts on FB.
2) Not getting cast shadows in the photographs of the drawings (kind of).
3) Instagram is for smart phones and is not-so friendly for posting through an internet browser.
Please follow my Instagram at
monstergram7 if you want to see my random napkin drawings or to contribute suggestions to an up-coming WSIDT sessions.
