 Know.Right, so I said I'm back in my previous post and then I disappeared again :) Well, luckily I didn't say I'll be more consistent this year since I know how easy it is to fall into whatever is going on at the moment and just not carve out time for this. And this, this does take a bit of time, who would have thought eh ;) It's August now and I'll do my best to be as short as possible to cover what was going on till the present moment. For starters, I kept my morning pages routine. I found this adorable and irresistible blank notebook and decided it'll be my first "sketchbook" to fill up. It's pages were of absolutely no good watercolor quality but I know that sometimes such a thing makes you be more creative and more inventive and also makes the book less precious to use. You can see in my first photo, second picture, that I did use watercolors in it and it kinda worked. Paper buckled a lot but as long as I kept drawing on one side only it was ok. And I did come to the last page with two things going on in my mind: 1. I did it! 2. Let me get back to the proper watercolor paper now! :D Looks like it really is a good idea to use the best paper you can, especially if you like using watercolors, as it makes for a huge difference in the experience of drawing itself. Not necessarily the outcome, but the doing, the painting and the way color behaves on paper. And since with a morning page one kinda sets up the whole day, it's good to have fun not experience bleh moments due to paper. I basically ended up using mostly black pens and fineliners as they worked really well on that paper so all in all, everything was good in the end. Phew! At the same time I launched, or better said, continued with my group activity over on FB. I resurrected My 52 Project and named it - My 52 in 2019. What a surprise eh ;) Since it was such a last minute thing I used the prompts from 2017 and only adjusted the second one, which covers Chinese sign of the year. I read my blog post abut the 2017 experience and how I wrote it wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be - mostly by doing a lot of catching up in the last days of December and how it wasn't supposed to be this way. Well, it's happening all over again :) I'm in a big catch up mode at the moment and am using Di Metcalf's Sketchpack Project to come even with the prompts. I did do some at the appointed weeks but mostly not. There are two reasons for it if I think about it: 1. I did my morning pages every day and that made me think I already was creative enough and that I could do other things - Ego chat for sure, keeping me away from my own project 2. I'm creating visual posts for these prompts to post on IG and FB - and it kinda makes me think I did them already - really weird trap to fall in Speaking about these visuals, let me put all we had till now right here because they look soooooo cool all together :D And because I'm inviting you to use them and hashtag your creations over on IG should you wanna share them:  I don't want to be too long so I'll just write down my conclusions about art challenges so that maybe, somebody else can find some use in them. And for myself of course, because I need reminders!
1. always finish what you started - what you said you will do - because if you don't, it will nag on you and make you feel bad and with this, lower your vibration significantly (and we all know that's a pretty bad thing). 2. if you like a challenge and would like to participate but don't know if you can commit to finish it - go in just for fun, no strings attached a.k.a. "I will do this!" as you don't want the line 1 to happen. Just do it and see where it takes you, you might even finish it and be really happy about it. Which is high vibrations and something we strive for :) 3. Jane Davenport wrote it down somewhere and now, I can only wholeheartedly agree with her - "Life is too short to use crappy paper." It was somewhere along these lines. So do yourself a favor and buy the best you can and use it with joy and pleasure. OR Know what your paper is suitable for and don't go over that. 4. It's never too late to start and never too late to finish - so dust your art supplies and start finishing what you started and get all excited about it again :) Yup, I wrote this in my last post too. 5. It's OK to fall back with the project because let's face it, life has other challenges as well. The important thing here is to not feel bad about it but to return to it as soon as possible and just catch up and be all positive about it again. There must have been a good reason it resonated with you in the first place you just need to remember it. 6. Share your challenge with your like minded friends as they will most certainly support you and cheer for you along the way if not even join you. Everyone does better with a cheer-leader :) 7. For drawing challenges - if they take a while - choose small pieces of paper to work on (or a small sketchbook) as it will be easier to accomplish your daily task. Trust me on this one, my 52 in 2017 was about A3 in size O_O ! No wonder I procrastinated so much. It also had the crappiest paper which I had to gesso prior to creating on. Must be my take on learning the hard way :D 8. I asked my dear teacher Guy Steven Needler about getting out of a challenge before finishing it and he said this: "One can only truly stop before finishing if the experience of learning has been achieved and the rest is supplemental or a slightly deeper experience but with no additional growth." It does make sense, doesn't it? Only, it's hard to know if we really learned all we were supposed to so I think it's better to finish than to be sorry later :) Now let me wrap up this post as it's a bit longish and I don't want to keep you here too long. If you have anything to add to my conclusions, please write a comment and I'll add it to the list. I can't think of anything else right now but I'm sure there's still something to be mindful of before jumping into a creative challenge. Right? Thanks for reading and all the best, always! With much love, ♥ nini
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