'Faces, Figures & Florals in Forty' Art Challenge!!
Paint, draw, scribble, splash...make 40 Faces, Figures or Florals in 40 Days ~ starting this Saturday 23rd July 2022!
I decided that I wanted to discipline myself to create something every day so that the procrastination didn't get the better of my artist self! Days can drag into weeks where every day life gets in the way and I find I have not held a pencil or brush in my hand. I am generally not at ease when this happens. Not as happy. Like something is missing, that I have forgotten to search for and not found. It's not a nice feeling, and I am sure many of you out there are familiar with this feeling. In fact, even those of you who are not practising or professional artists, are also feeling this feeling. It's our soul knocking on our shoulder saying 'create something'...'let your muse play & express itself'.
Well, I intend to do something about that discomfort. Even though I am painting regularly, I still get frustrated with myself with the large intervals of time between paint sessions. When life gets in the way or interrupts me in the middle of a painting, I am so easily distracted, that I take AGES to get back to the easel. Also, even when I AM, painting, I feel that uncomfortable feeling of loss that I should be painting something else, lol! Do ever feel that too? So weird, right!? Us creatives & want-to-be-creatives, jump from one shiny object to the next shiny object and get inspired all over the place, forming so many ideas...that there just isn't time to act on all the impulses and bring all the things into fruition. Often it means that a part of our psychological self, spiritual & emotional self is not getting to see the light of day for really long stretches...if ever! And that is a tragedy! :(
So THIS. Is an opportunity to PLAY. To EXPLORE. To become INSPIRED! And to PROLIFICALLY, CREATE! I'll be doing it and I invite you, to come join me!
I don't like rigid rules. The artist in me loves freedom. So whilst there are no hard & fast rules for this art challenge (other than creating 40 FFF's in 40 days), I will offer some suggestions & prompts. I'll also try & pop them into a little pdf, so you can print it off & hang it in your art space ( & kitchen, & living room :) ) to remind you on the daily. AND, I will organise a place over on fb where you can post up your creations to help encourage & inspire each other. So, here we go!...
Loose, flexible & breakable 'rules':
Draw or paint in any medium, on any substrate, in any style/technique...a face or a figure or floral drawing/painting every day for forty days. Thats it!
Ideas:
Start a new drawing or painting or body of work/series
Finish or go over old paintings
Develop preliminary sketches in your journal
Play with line, colour, shape, texture, contrast, whimsical, realism, zentangle, plein air, small studies, with a new medium or art supply
Test out colour/palette mixes
Combine mediums & see what happens
Reinvent old ideas into new mixed media paintings
Create onto fabric
Prompts:
Old masters inspired recreations
A mood or emotion
Animals or humans
Action hero figures
Flowers on their own, in your garden or in a landscape
Flowers under water
A memory
A desire
A dream
Restrict your colours to a limited palette
Explore warm colours or cool or highly saturation or subdued
Alla prima/wet on wet
Palette knife painting
Graphite or charcoal sketch
Layers
Quick draw
Slow marks
A paint marathon (paint 10 paintings one on top of the previous one for 10 days) to practice detachment & letting go...to let in something new (*tip: take a photo fo each of the 10 paintings to inspire recreating bigger works later on or developing further in your journal)
Build texture
Impressionism
Abstractified
Stylised
Realism
Naïve style
Other inspiration & prompts from others can be found here & here
* The main thing is to have fun & enjoy the challenge. Don't be hard on yourself. If you miss a day...so be it. Pick it up again the next day. If you need inspiration, conversation, encouragement or would like to share what you are painting, drawing or creating...pop over to this fb page I created for the art challenge and say hi/post a pic.
I will add more ideas & resources below as I think of them & will do my best to keep updating.
Enjoy!
And if this particular Art Challenge isn't really rocking your boat or speaking to you, you can find other one's here & here
Finally, here is a printable pdf of this post so you can have the guidelines & prompt ideas handy.
All the best & happy creating!
x Tanya
ps. If you are sharing your work you can use the hashtag #fffsinfortyartchallenge to let others know about it