Well, now that the New Year is well underway, I was thinking about ways to keep content on the blog engaging for both me and the readers.
Pears Doodle
I'm ever-inspired by one of my very favorite artists Lisa Congdon who is, I believe, the queen of consistency and challenging herself to new things via her blog. Among many other projects, she's documented her collections; written something in different handwriting and posted daily for a year; and challenged herself this year to a painting a week in blue.
Scratchy pen pear
So I've decided to pick one subject for each month and try new ways to draw, paint, scribble, doodle, splat, collage or do whatever with that thing.
Splatty Rotten Pears Doodle
January's subject, as you may have already figured out, is PEAR.
Prickly Pear?
I've started out the easy way - drawing the way I know how to draw.
Pear Tree - sans Partridge
Generally very graphic and blocky at least in my sketchbook.
Pear Portraits - Work in Progress
I did try that scratchy kind of thing (up above) which while not brilliant, was still fun to do and I learned a little something.
Pear painting tutorial from www.growcreative.blogspot.com
I'll certainly try out some tutorials and share them and the results with you here - and I'll just see where it takes me.
http://clintonhobart.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/pear-demo.html
You might be wondering how I generated the list. Frankly, it was random. I picked things that I knew would be easy for me to draw - so the challenge would be to find new ways to draw them. (PEAR is a good example.)
And then I've picked some things that I think might be really hard to draw, but it will be an exercise in exploring new territory and subject matter. It will get me to dig deeper and push myself to be a better artist in lots of ways.
My word of the year.
SO - I won't give you the list for the whole year because it will be more fun if it's a surprise and I might change my mind on some things part way through. But I will say that after I made the list, I saw Lisa's 31-days of Drawing on CreativeBug and had to chuckle at how many subjects I had actually picked that were in common with her list.
Lisa Congdon's Class brochure with Creativebug
I love these little examples she's shown and I hope that this exercise I've set up for myself pushes me into new ways of thinking, drawing and working that I haven't done before. In any case, stay tuned. This should be good.