Saturday, January 5, 2008

Kick starting the muse

Day one drawing

I'm restless. Can't settle to anything. Well, I can settle quite happily in front of the television, or with a book in my hand, but I want to get on with some art! I suspect the problem is that I don't know where to start, or rather that there is so MUCH I could start that I'm overwhelmed by choice.

Should I start that painting that's been burbling away in the back of my mind for months? Or work on finishing some of the drawings I've started? Maybe I could begin one of the sculptures I jotted notes on last month...

Decisions, decisions.

So I've set myself a project. I'll make a drawing a day for the next week (initially I thought for the next month, but that was kinda daunting! If I'm still going after a week, I'll aim at another week and we'll see how it goes from there), and set some parameters: I'll use the pages from one of my stash of old Mills & Boons novels (I love the paper - yellowing and foxing, a lovely creamy texture. Doesn't matter that it's not archival, nothing lasts forever) so the drawings
will be quite small (a huge expanse of blank paper intimidates me, these pages are already printed on, so the pressure is off), I can draw whatever I feel like, for as long as I want whether that turns out to be five minutes or an hour, I'll use mostly black ink (maybe I'll use touches of coloured markers), and there is no expected outcome other than to draw.

Maybe that'll kick start me into making something else.

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