I am a social media/ Instagram challenge addict. I know I have a lot going on but I could not resist joining in on #the100dayproject for the third year in a row. I would like to thank Elle Luna for creating this inspiring challenge and I hope to participate for many more years to come. Take an action and repeat it for 100 days in a row and document your progress. Since I am enjoying my metallic watercolors/gouache paints so much I decided to base my theme around them and other metallic art materials. I am looking forward to seeing what this next 100 days brings me creatively as I know it will challenge me in unexpected ways as it progresses. I'm also very interested in seeing what other creatives are doing. How many new voices are participating in 2017 and how many are returning like myself. Say hi in the comments and let me know what action you plan on repeating over the next 100 days. It's a long time, but we can do it!
Quality time is cheap
When your current daily inspiration is a 60p gridded A6 notebook from Muji. I love nice paper and beautifully bound books that collect precious sketches. I even made a point to back the latest edition of the Perfect Sketchbook with it's lovely leather hardbound body filled with the finest Italian watercolor paper. But that won't be arriving for some months! In the meantime I have been finding myself getting too precious about my Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and as a result my work suffers. Time to spend some quality time with a cheap sketchbook and get back to obsessive low pressure sketching and what caused me to start drawing again in the first place. Thin (but surprisingly sturdy) paper. Not precious. Loving it.
An Inky Challenge for 2015
I have been debating this idea for awhile now but I have decided to go for a daily ink challenge for 2015. I am still working out the details but I think the big things are that every day I need to make something with ink in 30 minutes or less. The #inktober challenge started off slow and difficult but midway through I hit a groove and ended up learning and growing through the challenge and missing it when it was over. My biggest artistic goal for 2015 is to improve my drawing skills and this should do the trick nicely. A year of daily ink is likely to be even more challenging than a month, but hopefully even more rewarding as well! I am excited to start and keeping it up during our travels should be interesting.
Right vs Left(y)
I'm a left handed artist. In printmaking it means that I need to throw out* the right handed knives that come with most sets and get a special left-handed or duel-bladed knife for myself. A typical right handed style blade is on the left and on the right is a duel sided pointed blade that works when held in both the left and the right hand. Very useful little tool that had to be special ordered.
There are lots of little challenges to being a left handed artist. The biggest one for me was avoiding smearing drawings with the side of my hand. Maybe that is one reason why I got into printmaking because there is no risk of smearing my work. Just a few special tools and tweaks and I am all set.
* Really I save them for students whenever I teach instead of throwing them out. But I can't use them effectively.
Picking myself up after failure
The daily blog writing in November was a failure. It started out really strong and about three weeks in I was burnt out writing and posting every single day. November is a long and busy month! I stopped having things that I wanted to write about and feeling that I could write about well. I didn't have the time to really spend time developing things to say and I felt rushed. Then once I started missing posts I let the failure go to my head and I started slacking off in other areas as well. But no more of that. I am going to be satisfied and proud that I blogged 22 out of 31 days and that many of those posts were in a row and that a number of them were pretty good. Then I am going to use December to rest and recover and most importantly keep going at a pace that works for me. Keep going.
