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.
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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.
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, I was all out of inspiration for weeks. 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 beeninspired 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. 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 of 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?
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This is my Inktober inspired Sketchbook Project for Twelvty 2018: Three ideas smooshed together between the covers of a 5 x 7 inch book which will be the springboard into a new adventure for next year.
……..this is a story that began in July……..
Part One: The Sketchbook Project
The Sketchbook Projectis just as the name suggests. It’s a collaborative art project, and it’s enormous. It’s 36,130 artists’ books contributed by creative people from 135+ countries over 11 years. In 2018it will contain at least one more, and that will bemy one.
My book arrived in the mail on Monday 31 July, straight away I set to work on doodling a first page with my initial thoughts and ideas:
Contented that I’d made my first mark, I set the book aside while I waited for the ideas to formulate. Then I got sick, and was away from my life for a while. The up-side to hospital-strength pain relief is that although I wasn’t able to create anything for a while, the visual ideas flooding my brain were far beyond what my usual imagination can conjure, and I’ve still got a solid grasp on what I saw inside my head.
Yes, they were colourful. (more on that in part three).
………. now let’s fast forward to September……….
Part two: Inktober
Inktober is an annual ink drawing challenge held online every October. Again, the clue is in the title.
I was dithering as to whether I’d participate this year, historically I’ve been rubbish at commitment. Is this a good reason not to play along? That’s what I was pondering on n off through September.
Until I hit upon the way my three ideas perfectly fit together.
Ink drawings are the scaffolding for the content of my sketchbook project – the top layer of which I’ll explain in part three – combining to make real what my muddled little opiated brain saw in hospital. And leading me into a project I’m planning for 2018!
“OHMYGOSH IT’S LOOKING A LOT LIKE A PLAN OF ACTION”
…………. now fast forward to October 1st……..
Today began page one of the sketchbook, #inktober doodle number one, a commentary on my thought process as the project reveals itself to me. It’s all quite meta.
Black and white drawings are all well and good, as they form the scaffolding for the content of my sketchbook, but in order for it to be ‘me’ it needs some color, right? Of course it does.
……. Which brings me to ……
Part three: TWELVTY 2018
“Twelvty“ is the environment in which almost all my art has evolved this year: With each month a new color – as conveniently there are 12 colors in the color wheel if you count the tertiaries (which are by far my favs) – this perfectly fits one year.
complementary colors: opposites in the color wheel
An aspect of this color wheel journey I’ve enjoyed exploring more deeply this year is the ways that each color fits in amid its neighbours; how they interact. How they dance.
I’ve developed a real fascination with balancing the pairs and groups of colors – the complementaries, the triadic groups…
This is something I intend to explore more thoroughly in a second variation of Twelvty in 2018.
This is also the way I plan to add color to the Inktober doodlings in the sketchbook project book.
The Plan:
So there we have it: The doodles and drawings of Inktober will form the structure of my vision for the sketchbook.
In November I’ll add the colours, which will be the pairs and threesomes of color theory illustrating the beauty of the color wheel.
This in turn will be the visualisation of a new program all about color balancing for the new year.
YIKES!
I’ll tell you more about these 2018 incarnations of Twelvty at a future date. Meanwhile I’ve got important doodles to do!
Be sure to get on my mailing list if you’re even a little bit interested in finding out more about TWELVTY 2018 cos there’ll be special deals for folks on my list!
Mixy's Art Blog 