Here it is - Consistent practice aimed at improvement yet detached from outcome: this is my intention for the ICAD2015 challenge.
Daily I meet an index card, face-to-face. I throw something on it and daily, I have a truce and say “job well done” or “job fail” or more than likely I’m somewhere in between.
A couple changes from last year's challenge to this year's challenge that would make me proud if my outcomes were at all better than they actually are:
- I am sketching regularly. The challenge comes with prompts, so I have been googling “how to draw a…” whatever the prompt is and usually someone has made a simple how-to tutorial, for example, on how to draw a mailbox or an owl or a table, all of which I used last week. I am not a great sketcher nor do I have any talent for drawing AND I am aimed at getting better every day.
- I am posting photos in the facebook group, even when I cringe thinking about what some of the “talented” artists will make of what I put on there. I write a tiny snippet about my process. This helps me, too.
- I am not relying only on vintage book pages, though they do show up in many of the cards. My favorite is probably my teen-owl. I made patterns from sketches (pattern making is new to me, too) and I love her sweet little face.
Before I go, this is my favorite card of the week, even though the art isn't spectacular it does show how I follow my curiosity. This is a sketch of Dmitri Mendeleev, a Siberian Chemist who invented (or was one of several inventors) of the Periodic Table of Elements. This was a prompt from the ICAD2015 folks. I tried sketching a table (bad) and others had drawn a table - I tried and failed - and when I googled the inventor and say Dmitri's face that reminded me so much of Walt Whitman, I decided I would try my face sketching out on him.
This is frightening because I am not a realistic artist by any means.
Yet, I tried. Whether the image is successful is, at this point, secondary.
Where in your life might you improve with consistent practice? I would love to hear more - take notes and photos, document and then tell me about it, please?
=====
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Spring, 2015 and beyond.
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)
And naturally, on Pinterest, too!
© 2015
Recent Comments