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
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When I’ve got just a few minutes to spare I go to my art journal, find a blank page or a space, and doodle.
These are the background layers that inspire what comes next.
This is how I fill the scraps of time while I’m waiting for paint to dry, or a file to upload, or just waiting for ideas to land.
There’s a real freedom in knowing it will get covered in sketches or collage, more doodles and scribbles. I don’t plan this, I don’t even choose the colors, I use whatever pens, paints and brushes are there on my desk.
Sometimes you just got to let art happen.
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Where do you find your inspiration? how do you stretch your creativity to include new patterns and shapes?
While I took a long pause from painting and drawing through the summer, seems maybe my muse melted in the heatwave,ย I was all out of inspiration for weeks.ย Instead I turned my attention to sewing and spent my spare time adding to this ongoing project .
Then, as suddenly as the ideas had dried up, they began to repopulate my thoughts.
The pages are beginning like usual, with splashes and washes of color from messy brush wipes, patches of color to use up left over paint.
BUT, the next step is the new part: every page is has space for drawing something I’ve beenย inspired by.
So often I take photos of patterns and shapes, so often I save images from artists and designers.
All the things that light up my imagination and set off a new train of doodles.
So I’ve got an enormous catalogue of inspiration tucked away in my phone, my bookmarks & favs.
When I get a spare few minutes, or when I want to warm up my drawing brain, I go to my art journal to add drawings and doodles inspired by someone or something in my list.
I was fascinated by the shapes and lines of these rocks on the beach in Cyprus last month. Dozens of photos of these wonderful wobbly lines. This is the first of a series they inspired.
Meanwhile, other artists have been drip-feeding ideas into my mind too.ย I invite their influence to stretch my skills, to let their style add new aspects to the way I doodle.
Alisa Burke creates fabulous flowery mandalas and often shares her process in Instagram. It’s such a meditative process, watching the patterns unfurl onto the page.
This is the first ofย my inspired by Alisa spreads.
art journal spread inspired by Alisa Burke
Where do you find your inspiration? how do you stretch your creativity to include new patterns and shapes?
If you’d like to be first to see what I’m making & doing, hop onto my email list here:ย
This Tiny Book is part of the #TinyBookCollective from Hope Fitzgerald over on Instagram. Check out her posts to see more itsy weeny books like this, and find out how to take part.
Colors & doodles from me, words fromย Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people
won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.”
This Tiny Book is part of the#TinyBookCollective from Hope Fitzgerald over on Instagram. Check out her posts to see more itsy weeny books like this, and find out how to take part.
If you’d like to be first to see the latest projects I’m working on & exclusive insights into the thoughts behind the splashy doodles, hop onto my email list for monthly-ish updates direct to your inbox:
Stories that emerge from pictures are in my mind today. Not the literal ones, but the ones that appear without words.
The stories that emerge from pictures are what’s forefront in my mind today. Not the illustrations of literal stories, I’m thinking about the ones that appear without words.
Untold, but there to be found.ย Waiting to be noticed, to be overheard.
Idling in my sketchbooks.
I keep seeing the same metaphors in what I draw and what Iย photograph: it’s all about perspective, the angle, the view.
Softened edges, a change of light.
Stop for a minute and just watch…
Where do you most notice the unspoken stories in the world around you?
If you’d like to be first to know what I’m working on, plus get exclusive offers on the things I make,ย clickety-hop aboard my email list right here.
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Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle & a kitten until the spring arrives.
I had a really clear idea what I wanted to do with this book from (almost) the outset last year – a rambling whirl of doodles, a stream of consciousness running through the pages.
The Sketchbook Project
It’s beenย a while since I checked in with you guys on this project, I’ve had to overcome a few obstacles along the way.
I had a really clear idea what I wanted to do with this book from (almost) the outset last year – a rambling whirl of doodles, a stream of consciousness running through the pages. Then I got ill, and the heavy duty pain medication I had in hospital inspired me with a really clear visual I wanted to recreate. As best I could, two-dimensionally on paper.
I began the line work back during Inktober, and looking back I remember at the time being aware of just how thin and flimsy the paper is in the book. I mean, super thin. It would hold up well to gentle care but I’m heavy handed and (because it’s all I had to hand and impatience is my biggest motivator in all I do) I used ballpoint pen. So my pages were already crinkling from the indentation of the lines.
That’s cool – it adds character – it’s my ‘style’ – go with it, I thought.
Then the holidays, then life, then I finally began.
this paper soaks up watercolor like a sponge.
Oh. My. Days!
You do NOT wanna use watercolors on this paper. Of course if I hadn’t been so hung up on the combination of:
This Sketchbook Project + These Colors + These Paints = Exactly What I Want To Do
then perhaps I wouldn’t have been temporarily blind the reality of:
This Medium + This Paper = A Certain Soggy Mess.
Soaked right through to the other side ๐ฆ
Damnit!
Ok, I’m an adaptable kinda person, I pride myself on being able to change direction, to adjust and adapt.
Acrylics, I thought. Acrylics are the answer. They will sit on top of the paper and give it a bit more substance as well.
Look at that paper curl! It seems Iย have angered the book now.
Nope. Not only is it a streaky mess, but the pages are actually curling up in disgust.
What do they want from me? light, delicate pencil? Do they know me AT ALL??
I heard a distant memory jangling about in the back of my mind – are there rules on what media we’re to use?ย – checking the website: sure, acrylics & gesso are discouraged because the pages get sticky and … yes, yes, I know all this…
So, my first plan of watercolor was back on the table – because, when I read on – we are allowed to rebind the book.ย ย I can use actual watercolor paper!ย ย
Now that time was getting squeezed, that forever-away-distant deadline was getting closer…ย I decided that keeping it simple was the best way forward. The elaborate plans I had to begin are on hold for a separate project later in the year, meanwhile I’m back with what I know best for the pages of this book: the idea that is fuelling my creativity and has done for a long while now: an adventure in 12 colors!
After all, it’s my thing, right?
My pages are complete and ready for binding, I’ll show the finished book as soon as I get some good light for photos – then it’ll be winging it’s way off to Brooklyn Art Library
If you want to be first to see what I’m making, and get exclusive discounts on these things,ย clickety-hop aboard my email list right here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up snug and nestled with a hot water bottle & a kitten until the spring arrives.
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