Sharing a sneaky peak into the first 100 pages of the GINORMOUS sketchbook!
Every week since the summer of 2020 I’ve been adding a new double page spread to my ‘Book of Days’, this 600 page sketchbook.
Periodically I update the progress with flip through videos. Picking up at page 94 where I left the last flip through, here’s a look at the next few pages.
I spent most of a day putting together the little concertina sketchbook that I’m using for the 100 Day Project this year AS WELL AS the Sketchbook Project.
Most every time I’ve taken on these projects, I’ve overclocked myself.
Given that I’ve already missed the deadline for the SBP by 6 months I thought to mash up these two projects.
Let’s see what becomes of it.
Some thoughts on Quirkfulness.
As I cut and glued and trimmed and finagled together the concertina pages, I watched the ebb and flow of acceptance that the stuff I make will inevitably have a wonkiness to it.
Yes, I measured and cut with a ruler. Also Yes, the pages came out a bit skew-whiff.
Yes, I cleaned my brush before I primed the paper, and also Yes, there was still a bit of dark blue paint on it that’s got them a bit streaky already.
Theme established:
It’s all part of the Quirkfulness.
Now, every day as I film and photograph steps in the progress, I remind myself:
Through the ugly stages, the layers i know will get covered up, the point is to carry on.
Quirkfulness is my style, it’s a feature not a bug.
It’s a sketchbook, not rocket surgery.
It’s okay to be okay with this.
Today we reached day 17 and I’m fully in my stride with daily progress, an idea of what the finished piece will look like, and all manner of chaos on and around my desk!
I post updates daily on Insta and sporadically on TikTok. If you’d like first look-see at what I’m up to, join up for my newsletter.
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
You’ll get an email to confirm you’ve signed up and are human. Sorry, only humans can join. Check your spam folder cos sometimes the good stuff gets swept in there by mistake. Also check with your cat.
Reporting in from half way through the 100 day project, I am up to my eyes in part-done paintings!
Because this time I’ve chosen to make my 100 pieces all at once instead of one per day, it’s proving tricky to see how far it’s progressing.
I’ve posted daily snippets of progress over on IG, including short videos & time-lapses showing some of the ways I’ve been keeping on top of this ridiculous number of works!
Adding a layer to a bunch of paintings all at once by drawing across them as one was fun. The spaces and shapes the big abstract squiggle made on each piece connects them, and also makes a individual drawing on each.
Filling in the gaps in between made these sweet sibling painting pairs.
Whole families of similarly colored pieces began forming, and this whole endeavor feels like a new community forming.
I look at these and consider: would a less complicated person call these finished?
Which leads me to wonder if an unconscious part of me decided to tackle the project this was a way to work on the art of knowing when something’s done.
One thing’s for sure, I don’t want to spend days 98 & 99 in a mad scramble of adding last touches to dozens of paintings. That sounds like such a ‘me’ thing to do.
So I’m thinking the second half of this marathon should focus on the process of final layers and finishings.
This is the where we are at, day 50, the end of the beginnings snd the beginnings of the the endings.
I’ll be back soon with news on the other doings and goings on in my studio. Meanwhile, to be first to see what I make and find out the thinking behind it, do sign up for my monthly-ish newsletters.
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
How ridiculous would it be to begin 100 paintings all at once? Let me show you…
We are 6 weeks into the 100 day project and I’m really loving this challenge.
Every day I post snippets of progress on IG, photos, videos & time-lapses of the layers adding up.
There’s a box on my desk homing the 100 started paintings, and at any one, time several are scattered across every flat surface around me as the newest layers dry!
Here are a few of the pieces I’ve been playing with this week.
So far I’ve used watercolours, acrylics and inks for larger blocks of color and graphite, charcoal, markers and fine liners for the details.
Is that all? It’s been a dizzying blur (but in the best possible way)
Yeh, then there was some potato printing & stamping with a recycled hot water bottle. I’m feeling like some collage elements could be showing up soon, and maybe some stitching too. watch this space! 😉
Next Sunday marks day 50, so I’ll be back next week with a special post at the half way point.
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
Twenty days in to the 100 day project, here’s where I’m at.
On 31 January I set myself the task to create 100 paintings in 100 days (see how it came about here).
I’ve been experimenting with different media and techniques, adding a little bit to a bunch of these paintings every day. Part of this challenge is to keep the colours quiet and muted, which doesn’t come naturally to me.
A few blue backgrounds were looking a little too vivid so I toned them down with grey to get back on track 😉
A bonus I did not expect from working in this whole new palette is that I’m getting much more of a buzz from the other (full volume color) projects that I’m working on at the same time.
To fully mix my metaphors, it feels like I’m getting a more balanced diet visually speaking, and I’m loving the contrast in flavours.
(I just finished a particularly colorful project, which I’ll tell you all about next week)
I enjoy using text in my art.
Either beginning with a word that fills the page and ornamenting it into something new, or using scribbled thoughts and chunks of wordage to fill blocks and shapes.
In the last few days I’ve been adding some time lapse videos of the process to the Instagram posts – I love re-watching the way pieces like this take shape as black ink squiggles about on wet paper.
To keep track of how many paintings I’ve started I began numbering them, which lead me to listing some words & thoughts on the back (As inspired by the great artist & teacher, Jesse Reno). Sometimes it’s a color I want to remember, or a thought that’s shown up (future me might bury that under more paint, so I’ve left her a note just in case).
As the layers build up, the lists will grow. Every painting will have its own little chronology. Some might become a poem, or a name for the painting might emerge. We’ll have to wait and see 😉
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
10 days into the 100 days project, laying down the first layers of 100 paintings.
Ten days into the 100 day project, already I’m amassing a satisfying stack of paintings-to-be with first layers down.
My strategy this year is not to make a complete painting every day, but still to make 100 paintings in 100 days.
Because the way I work best is to have lots of pieces on the go at any time. I hop about between them and the ideas cross pollinate. These 100 days of Quiet Color are taking a familiar route, spiraling through layers and iterations of pattern.
Right now I’m all about watercolor and ink in swirly shapes (beginning with words which quickly evolve into more abstract shapes). Some already have a lot of tiny details,
(while these first colors are drying I move onto another one)
While others are washes and blobs of color – just a very beginning.
The quiet colors de jour are Payne’s Grey, Indigo & Sepia with a bit of Black & White gouache.
3 weeks is a long time (too long) to be away from my studio, so I bundled up some necessaries for the trip and took a bit of time every morning to move some color about.
The first time I visited Cyprus was almost 20 years ago, and as I stepped off the plane, it felt like I’d come home. Something feels really familiar in the smell of hot dusty air. There were sounds and senses that did not seem at all foreign despite being 2000 miles from the place I’ve lived all my life.
Over the years I’ve been back many times, and never lost this home from home feeling.This year I wangled a way to spend 3 weeks here, and had time to really soak myself into the surroundings: the rich vivid colours & heady scents of bougainvillea & jasmine – the sand between my toes – luxuriating like the the cats that roam and loll around every corner.
But 3 weeks is a long time away from my studio routines, so I bundled up some necessaries for the trip and took a bit of time every morning to move some color about.
These are colors I chose to take (mostly Daniel Smith’s watercolors – decanted into half pans in a little tin box).
I second guessed my choice after I swatched them out here – why so many colors so similar? but as it turned out they were just what I needed, vivid blues & magentas amid the warm stony earth tones..
I’m not much of a landscape painter – my camera is for catching actual views – leaving my sketchbook as the place for playing with ideas.
The ideas I found myself playing with was the similarities and echoing patterns, repeating undulations, the ripples in the water with the curve of the waves, the textures in rocks and stones, the shifting shapes of shadows in the early autumn breeze. Mixing and remixing, folding ideas together into an endless series of permutations.
Re-entry
I feel I’m like returning a bit at a time after a long trip away – this time it took almost a week to really gather myself together into one place. What eased the transition was the pages in this book that overlapped the geography. The patterns of the travels merged into the patterns of usual daily doings & the edges between the two worlds blurred.
Catch this month’s newsletter to see a flip through of these pages to find out where this little collection of images leads next!
Processing…
Success! You're on the list.
Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
Giddy excitement. When I started this new (oooh new!!) art journal I decided to make the whole book the subject of a big time lapse experiment. There’s nothing like a new book to fill me with BIG intentions.
Plan: I’ll play first thing every morning and record what happens, then edit it all into a video for (mostly my own) amusement.
Reality: It’s been some mornings, but if I aim for all I’ll hit some. If I aim for some I might not hit many at all, the book will sink under a pile of other stuff, I won’t remember the plan. I know me. I know how this plays out.
Thing # 1
If there’s one thing I consistently am, it’s inconsistent. Just the act of making a plan triggers the part of my brain that prevents me doing the thing, no matter how much I enjoy thinging that kinda thing.
Is this massively incompatible with daily life? Abso-total-lutely it is. Jeepers yes. It’s really inconvenient and a battle I fight with myself all the time.
Thing # 2
If I let thing #1 stand in my way, it will destroy my creativity, and I’ll achieve nothing.
So in order to outwit myself I’ve put together the video of the first few pages. It’s not (yet) the epic project I first envisaged, and it might never be. But for now it is this, and this is a thing. If I’m quick, I’ll have done this before I realise I’ve fallen into my on trap. Sneaky? darned right I am.
For more stuff like this join up for my monthly-ish newsletter right here:
Processing…
Success! You're on the list.
Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
Over the weeks and months these pages changed beyond recognition. This is a snapshot into the evolution.
This week we reached the end of the #100dayproject. Every day for over 3 months I posted my daily doodles to Instagram. Yikes!
Sometimes just photos, but for the most part, I shared little 30 second or so time lapse videos.
This is an art journal I’ve been doodling back and forth through for a long time. Every day I’d find a page that wanted something new, different colors or just had a space to fill. I’d scribble down words that caught my attention in a podcast or song lyrics, I’d sketch and play and add bits of scraps of stuff from my desk.
There are no rules in a book like this, nothing can go *wrong*. It’s all subject to change, it’s all ephemeral.
Over the weeks and months these pages changed beyond recognition. This is a snapshot into the evolution.
Evolving ideas
You can see a full flip through of this book by joining up for my newsletter. I share monthly (-ish) musings from my studio, first looksies at what I’m making, and exclusive discounts in my online sales, but if that’s not your jam you can unsubscribe at any time.
Processing…
Success! You're on the list.
Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.
This year’s #100dayproject is all about the doodle for me. It’s my meditation, my therapy, my escape from the noise of my thoughts.
“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.”
― Neil Gaiman
Folks! We are SO VERY NEARLY there!!
I’ve got new plans a-buzz for after tomorrow when we reach day 100, but until then, here goes the final fix of 9 pics!
This year’s #100dayproject is all about the doodle for me.
It’s my meditation, my therapy, my escape from the noise of my thoughts. For 100 days this year I’m sharing these little mark making experiments with time lapse videos and a bit of wordage about my process.
Mixy's Art Blog 