I generally don't start the year with setting intentions or determining goals for the rest of the year. However, I have been pondering starting a new daily art making project and I felt like the new year is also a nice starting point for something like that.
Me, being me, the first of January would have been to neat a starting point so I will probably just randomly start once I can no longer stand putting it off.
Last time, designing an activity for my 100 day project was quite easy. It had to be quick and fun. Something I loved doing and something that was easy. And so I turned to Gelli plate printing.
This time I want to learn something. I want to do something that is giving me lots of resistance at the moment. I want to draw. I am not good at it at all and so doing it every day for 100 days or more would hopefully improve my skills while at the same time providing me with the much desired daily artistic engagement.
One of the (key) ingredients of doing my daily art practice is that I share the work on my social media. No one likes to show off things they are not great at but I do believe in sharing the work as a way to connect to the world and other humans in it. So it has been somewhat scary to begin.
Why daily art making? Why not weekly? Well, in my case, it is pure necessity. If I don't do it daily I only rarely get to it. The habit of creative expression is something special. As the days progress the expectation that there will be art making in the evening starts to get a hold inside of me and everything around becomes inspiration. The creative task stays with me and energizes me, it makes the mundane special and the extraordinary daily occurrence. When making art every day, it becomes like eating, a necessity.
After finishing my hundred days of gelli print making I could have easily continued. Day 100 of 100 was just another day of making. And yet I did stop. That 100th day was an end point. So this time I am also pondering not putting an end date and to see where that leads me, or to do it for the full 365 days. How would that be?
365 days of drawing things I see.
"Things I see" can be broad, this means I can also just draw something on my desk. That lowers the effort bar significantly. I know from last time that often, I will just arrive at my desk in the evening and work with whatever is there. The easier the better and the higher the chance it won't feel like an impossible mountain to climb.
"Things I see" is about attention and observation. Both are interesting areas for me so my curiosity is there. That's the main thing, to start with things I am curious about.
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