Thursday, January 04, 2007

Art Escapes Me - Developing My Art Habit

Yesterday I found an illustration on Carolines blog from a book called Art Escapes. (Carolines review of the year is a fantastic read as is her blog but if you want to ff to the picture it's under November).

I have been following Caroline's blog and her journey on The Artists Way with interest, and almost pulled my own copy of Art Escapes off the bookshelf at the weekend. This is my version of the same exercise.

My artistic nature can be quite temperamental, it always has been, when I sat my art O'level I was also entered into the CSE exam as the O'level involved a timed still life drawing and there was always the possibility I could have got cross with my drawing and walked out or rip it up, not much has changed but after tearing this up I salvaged it by painting the background and stitched it back together, and written sideways on the blue line is the profound statement...art escapes me.

The book contains ideas and exercises to develop your creativity into a daily habit, to make a little art everyday, it encourages you to create a page in your journal everyday for a month, as research show that if you do something consistently for a month, it can become a habit.

Unfortunately last time I tried this I managed 10 days, and although I have followed other creative paths since then my sketchbook has been left untouched since May 2005. My main problem is time management and lack of discipline, so this year I'm going to make more of an effort. I have also ordered a copy of The Artist's Way.

So today I doodled......



I often wander through blogland and followed a trail from Mariyarn's blog, to Steve's blog and Carolines, and the one common link between all three apart from creativity was the Camel Exchange a free for all doodle swapping blog....looks like fun and here is my 1st entry from Carolines Christmas Present I have made Butterbirds!


Teency bit of digital wizardry and I've altered the colour and buttonised it.





2 comments:

Caroline said...

Thanks for the link Jo!

The thing that I've meant to do from Art Escapes but consistently failed to do so far is make the kits for carrying things around. I do now have the felt to make them with but I've not been sewing much recently....

I love the way your cup turned out - very effective.

As for developing a habit in a month... I've done things for years and then just stopped... even when I'd rather I'd kept going!

And thank you very much for joining in at the Camel Exchange!

Marianne said...

Very nice, Jo, and quite interesting, but your spinning...does it not count? Playing with Neo, does this not count? I mean, art *can* be walking down the street... creativity manifests itself in countless ways, eh?