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.
โIf I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.โ
โ Edward Hopper.
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.
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.
โ Trust that life will always, always, take you where you‘re supposed to be.โ
โ Rachel Brathen.
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.
” The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”
โ Rene Magritte .
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.
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
โ Louis L’Amour.
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.
It’s that time of year again , Instagram is full to bursting of 100 day projects. I love the variety of ideas that populate this challenge. This is my third year of participating. ๏ปฟ
โComing back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.โ ~ Sir Terry Pratchett
It’s that time of year again, Instagram is full to bursting of 100 day projects. I love the variety of ideas that populate this challenge.
Previously…
In 2017 I missed the start date by a long way. I didn’t know this was an annual event, or anything much at all except it was a hashtag that intrigued me. I took the next 6 months to complete 100 daily pages of art journal.
In 2018 I was all amped up to go from day one. I decided on a hugely ambitious project. I even wrote myself a manifesto. For real!By day sixty-something I was utterly spangled and my group of 100-day-canvasses* are still ‘resting’ in a not quite complete stage.
*that’s 5 canvasses for the 100 days. Not 100 canvasses. I’m over ambitious, for sure, but not that much…
I’ll circle back round to them some day. When they’re ready.
Opting Out…
This year I had no plans to join the project.
I love watching everyone else’s projects in all their iterations play out and develop. I’m fascinated by the broad reach of the themes; the devotion and the grace; the patience and the determination. [Is this you? Leave a comment below with your IG handle so I can follow you too ๐ ]
My 2019 is a time of stepping away and of setting aside, I’ve been deliberately disengaging from social media, opting out and resisting. I’m doing my darnedest to play more offline than online to help de-frazzle my achy brain.
This year I planned watch and absorb instead.
Oh. Surprise!
So no-one was more surprised than I was to find myself getting all zinged up on April 2nd – day one of the project – when I determined the thing I wanted to do more than anything else was to join in again!
I made a commitment to myself already to make some sort of art every day in this little Moleskine book. It’s been with me over a year and I especially while I’m still a bit high on the fun of the sketchbook project book I just completed (more on that soon) this feels like a gift of accountability- momentum I just can’t ignore.
Will I last out for 100 days? I’ll post updates here as and when [ or you can check the daily doodles I add on Instagram ] for now I’m enjoying it, and that’s all that matters to me ๐
Meanwhile, If you want to be first to know about my colorful antics on and offline, join up for monthly news direct by email.
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I’ve been off line for a while, playing in the analogue world of paints and glue and little bits of torn up paper. Recharging & recombobulating. Playing with things like this.
I’ve been off line for a while, playing in the analogue world of paint and scribbles and little bits of torn up paper. Recharging & recombobulating. Playing with things like this.
This book lived on my desk through the first half of this year. Over the weeks and months it grew fat and messy with ‘while I’m waiting’ doodles, with mopped up paint spills, scraps of stuff, with the words and ideas that were orbiting my mind.
When it was all done, I made this quick flip thro vid:
ย And when I say quick, I know it’sย super quick.ย So here’s a more leisurely stroll through some of the pages, and some of the ideas that keep rolling back into my art.
Stories unfold from the words I’m listening to in audio books and podcasts, and the characters evolve from magazine pages, advertisements and found paper.
Lines of text set against rows or polkadots, knitted together with scribbly handwriting. Faces in the spaces.
Backgrounds from maps: borrow the contour lines, take them off wandering into new places.
Cut out shapes from scrap paper.
Add eyes and whiskers: see them come to life.
“Meow”
Writing down the words I heard and want to remember later.
I leave notes and messages for me-in-the-future scattered through my art.
“Thereโs a reason why we get the ideas we get.” (so itโs important to put them someplace safe until theyโre ready to use)
Then there’s the found poetry from song lyrics, Inertia blue zero freeze. (idk)
Dotted lines around the edges make me happy:ย as any small child will tell you, theyโre really fun to do. Especially in time to music.
Texture in sticky thick paint, like tree branches or arteries, reminds me art is alive and part of nature. And vice versa.
Messing about with perspective with angles and lines. Inventing new people. Anything’s possible in a book.
These words were pinned to my wall of ideas, making space for new things, now they’re rehomed in the book. Keep things you love in sight, always.ย
Negative space: white paint dampensย the cacophony of color.
Opportunity is everywhere. It really is.
Case in point, I collect cards at art fairs, copying shapes, giving this gal a sister.ย
Copying faces, shapes and tricky things like hands.ย
Dropped in here and there amid all the noise and color takes the pressure off.
How they look isn’t important when they merge in with all this stuff.
Keep playing, keep making it up as you go along. That’s really all there is.
If there’s one thing that keeps my creative imagination alight, its progressing a few pieces in parallel. Sometimes a piece has to sit and dry, or sometimes it needs just simply to sit.
If there’s one thing that keeps my creative imagination alight, its progressing a few pieces in parallel.
Sometimes a piece has to sit and dry, or sometimes it needs just simply to sit.
It might be in (one of) the ugly phases, uncooperative, or just tired and needing a rest.
Ideas need to incubate, assimilate, to marinate in wet paint or to settle amid the layers of thought processes and ideas.
Among these layers of color and pattern are layers of construction and deconstruction.
Themes emerge and submerge, continually spiralling around, cross pollinating each other as they go.
Time finds their place, turning in turns they cycle into their next phase.
(I often feel like I’m on the outside looking in while this happens)
These images are snapshots of the paintings I’m making for the 100 day project. You can see them develop day by day in little time-lapse snippets over in Instagram#100LayersByMixyย
These little videos, in turn, are combining into longer video stories.
The first is out there in the youtubesalready, but for exclusive first viewings you’ll need to clickety-hop aboard my email list right here:
Today we reached the quarter way mark, day 25 of the #100dayproject.
To celebrate I’ve joined up the videos of the first layers of the first canvas I began working on. It’s still a work in progress, but already it’s been through so many evolutions.
The 100 Day Project 2018
I like an outrageously crazy challenge as much as the next person.
I’ve been known to dive into some over ambitious projects without thinking it all the way through (for risk of talking myself all the way out in the process).
But even I knowย while I’m not in my studio every day,ย finding time for painting every day for 100 days isn’t realistic.ย I listened to my inner adult, and together we came up with a plan:
My 100 day project is to paint as often as I can, and post an update every day for 100 days.
To make that possible and prepare I let these paintings take over a long weekend at the start of the month in order to get ahead.
(Best. Weekend. Ever!)
If you haven’t seen the posts, I’ve beenย time-lapsing the process to share on Instagram.
This filming shrinks down the rate of progress to just 10%, making a half hour of painting flash by in 30 seconds! It’s fascinating to watch it back, to literally watch over my own shoulder as I paint. I follow my instincts and don’t plan what I’ll paint, so the images evolve out of nowhere, and then recede back under the newer layers.
Today we reached the quarter way mark, day 25.
To celebrate I’ve joined up the videos of the first layers of the first canvas I began working on. It’s still a work in progress, but already it’s been through so many evolutions.
I’ll be making little videos like these for all 5 paintings as I go along.
If you’d like an exclusive preview of these, and other things I’m making, join up for my email newsletters. At the time of typing, they go out just once or twice a month, so I won’t be flooding our inbox!
100 Days, 3 Whys: By the time I noticed the hashtagย #the100dayprojectย that kept bobbing up in my Instagram feed last summer, it was already well under way. I was intrigued…
The 100 Day Projectย ย begins again on April 3rd – are you in?
By the time I noticed the hashtagย #the100dayprojectย that kept bobbing up in my Instagram feed last summer, it was already well under way. I was intrigued by the challenge: a creative act every day for 100 days. Right away I wanted in,ย ย I was late to the party and my 100 days weren’t consecutive, but I saw it through and I learned a lot along the way.
In 2017 ย I made a little drawing every day for 100 days, inspired by the photos in my phone.
I take pictures obsessively wherever I go, so I had a gazillion or so images of places and things, textures and colors, interesting patterns and reflections, little memories and captured moments of my days. I collect these images for inspiration, but to be honest with you this was the first time I really made a concerted effort to use them.
Every day for 100 days I rummaged through this collection, picked one out, and made a drawing based on what I found. Sometimes it was close to a copy of the image, sometimes just a shape or outline inspired my imagination to take off some place else.
This year I’m doing something new.
These arrived yesterday. 5 big canvases,ย still wrapped up and I’m itching to begin painting…. ย
My 3 Whys
There are three big reasons why I chose this project for myself
I love working small. Tiny, itsy little & weeny are the scale I default to.ย These canvases are 30 x 24 inches. Not enormous – but way bigger than I usually work. I’m curious how it will be working BIG for a change.
Canvas. Historically I haven’t got on so well with canvas. Is it the texture? I don’t know. ย If I’m going to find out, ย I need a project that corners me into using these. Another direction away from my comfort zone.
100 days! Seriously, a HUNDRED days! It’s longer than it sounds, and it sounds a long time!ย I plan to pace myself. This challenge will be finding balance, I’m prone toย haring or tortoisingย and not so much in the middle. I want to learn to meet myself in the middle.
As we get closer to the start date my ideas are solidifying,ย I’ll tell you more about my project tomorrow.
What is your creative stretch? Do you want to step outside of your usual practice and explore new territory?
Are you joining the 100 day project? I’d love to know what you plan to make and do. Let’s meet up in Instagram and we can cheer each other along as we go ๐
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