366 Days of Drawings

I think I’ve mentioned this, but I wanted to write a post about what kind of art I have been up to in the last little bit. Art has been a big part of my life for the last three years or so now. I was worried about going off to college that I was going to start slacking and take a break from drawing or painting. It’s hard to paint big canvases or murals here, even though that's my favorite thing to do. Since September, I have been struggling to find projects I really care about. Last March, I did my art show at the Cooperstown Art Association and since then I have really missed having something important to create. That show really meant the world to me and I really want to do something like that, or something bigger, again. While struggling to find a solid project to start, I looked into my past work for inspiration. Over my senior year I did a drawing a day and posted them on the bulletin board outside of the art room. I did five days a week, one for each school day. I’m sure people looked at it and said “That’s all you’ve been doing this year”, but it was a lot of work. Coming up with something new and different every day was a really big creative challenge. Towards the end of the school year, I had other things on my mind and wanted to focus more on my personal life before I left. It was slightly being burnt out and laziness. I really loved the challenge of that project. I ended it when the school’s art show came around. I feel like I let myself down. When it comes down to it, quitting only affected me. Looking back at it and looking through all the drawings I did, there is a big gap in time. I look back at things to remember the times and feelings. Missing so many days made some of those memories disappear into thin air. For Christmas, my dad scanned and photoshopped all the drawings. He got me a personalized book of each and every one of them. I look back and remember my senior year so fondly because of them. I can remember each day by just looking at them. I call them drawings, but they are really just different characters I came up with every day. I don’t really know how I came up with this style, but I think it's pretty cool. When I got this book, it really sparked a great idea for a project in my head. 366 days in a row, one extra because of the leap year. Not missing a single day in 2024. Originally when I said this out loud, I thought I was crazy. I barely got to 140 days the last time I tried and that was only five days a week. Now that we are into the early stages of March, I am so happy that I haven’t missed a single day. Through traveling to Wisconsin and Pittsburgh, going home, doing school work and my laziest of days, I haven’t skipped a single day. I’m proud of that, but I’m not even a fourth of the way done. I have so many ideas about what to do for these drawings and I don’t think I’ll burn out anytime soon. The cards are definitely smaller than what I did for my school project, but they are pre-cut and much more manageable. They take twenty to forty minutes to finish. It’s a pretty peaceful part of every day. I usually do them after my morning classes or when I wake up on days off. The Bristol paper company makes trading card size packs for artists to trade around the world. I find that pretty interesting and I like that is where I get these cards from. I like the idea of sharing my art around the world. I don’t think I’ll post all of them until the 366th day of the year, but I can’t wait to share my year with you all, even though I kind of already am with this blog. Happy Wednesday!