Over the last days of the decade I’ve been thinking back to where my creative journey has wandered. You can see parts one & two in my previous posts. Now let’s catch up to the moment before we dive into the 2020s.
2017:
TWELVTY – Etsy – The 100 Day Project – Postcards.
Inspired by my own 12 month / 12 color project from 2012, I created a year long online class – TWELVTY – a trip around the color wheel. It was so much fun, over half the folks who joined me came back for a second time the next year!
Each month we explored a different color together. As part of the class I shared the making of this 12 color art journal filled with my most fav mixed media techniques.
2017 was the first year I heard about the 100 day project through social media. I missed the official start date, but in 100 days I made 100 drawings inspired by the random photos in my phone. I learned a lot in the process.
The images and faces that showed up in this book inspired my first collection of mini-print postcards, and more ideas that would unfold over the next months.
2017 was the year I launched my Etsy store, and as the year moved on I filled it with the colorful things I made.
Meanwhile, in the background I had a sketchbook of ideas fermenting into future ideas…
2018:
TWELVTY – the 67-ish day project – the Sketchbook Project – the Tiny Book Collaboration.
This year I stepped up the TWELVTY game, instead of making an art journal with the experiments in 12 colors, I made two 3D mixed media color wheels.
The 100 day project called me to step up again too. This time I embarked on a series of big paintings on canvas.
I don’t often work this big, I’d not painted on canvas before, and I planned to make my 100 day project from 100 time lapse videos of progress on these.
Tbh I really bit off more than was possible this time, so when I got about two thirds through I stopped and set these paintings aside for a while. I’m beginning to get the itch to return to them soon (watch this space!)
Sometimes it’s more difficult to stop when the time is right, to wait it out, than it is to plough on regardless. I feel like that was the biggest lesson learned for me this time.
I’m much more at home working in a small scale – when I heard about the Sketchbook Project it sounded exactly my kinda thing.
In light of this trajectory, it’ll come as no surprise that when I head about the Tiny Book Collaboration I joined up without a second thought!
Of course, while this is all going on I’m feeding my muse with regular down-time in an art journal. This was a fun change of format and opened lots of panoramic new ways to play.
2019:
Ink Dyed Papers – 100 days in 100 days – The Sketchbook Project twice – and a ZINE!
I began this year in my studio with more experiments in paper dying. It really took over everything for a couple of months or so, and I’ve still so much to tell you about this – something for the new year!
This time around I began my 100 day project on the ‘official’ start date and managed to complete 100 days in just that. I set my own rules and made them manageable this time – adding to an art journal I’d been dabbling in for a while took a lot of pressure off – so each day I just added a bit more.
Days add up to weeks add up to completed pages added up to 3 and a bit months of daily practice. These pages inspired my latest set of mini-print postcards.
2019 was book-ended by the Sketchbook Project.
Earlier in the year I completed my 2019 book, and to my amazement I finished my 2020 book before December 2019 was out. Each one is more elaborate than its predecessor, I think that goes to show how much I love making these books!
The first book was home to the characters, the imaginary friends & curious creatures, who collaborated with me to make my first ZINE that I published in December.
So the year ended as it began, in a delighted frenzy of gluing and doodling, as I assembled the pages of my 2020 Sketchbook project into this. It’ll be flying off to Brooklyn after the holidays, and another decade of making will commence.
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Thank you!
Thank you all so much for joining me in this journey – your support means more than I can tell you. I hope I can keep spreading inspiration around the blogosphere and color around my pages for many more decades, and I hope you’ll be here too.
Big love to you my friends,
I wish you a fabulous 2020 and beyond! X
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