Operation: Making art for 30 days is a GO!
Feeling Overstimulated during March and my little project for April 2024
This post is part of a monthly newsletter known as "Creative Snippets" where I Sodapam share snippets of my life being a Creative. If your interested in being the first to know what I get up to each month consider subscribing! (It's free!!)Hey there! I hope this newsletter finds you well!
I have a very exciting announcement:🎉
But before I announce it, let me tell you how it began..
It was a dark and stormy night on Feb 3rd (it wasn’t really stormy but you know, the dramatic effect is needed) I had previously been thinking about some projects I could take on for myself as a way to enjoy the process of making art.
Yet so far I hadn't found anything that peaked my interest..
But anyways, I was reading a post on my laptop about giving free art away by
and as finished reading his post I had this light bulb idea that “I could do it too!!” and decided to turn it into a 30 day art challenge.So yeah that's my big project
Currently I'm using small pieces of watercolor paper so that I can use any medium I desire. I’ve actually never really successfully done an art challenge like this so this will definitely be interesting..
The goal of this project for me is to be able to let go of my art, have fun and experiment. I want to use this project as an opportunity to try new things and go crazy with my mediums.
I may have technically already started the challenge but feel free to come along on the journey! Share it with a friend and do this challenge as well!
Life in March
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
~Anne Lamott
If I could describe this month in one word I would say “Overstimulated”. You know how sometimes too much information is flying at you all at once that you don’t have time to process.. yeah that was me the whole month.
This honestly was caused by a couple of things like, social media scrolling, lack of sleep, etc..
And because of this there’s this feeling of restlessness I’ve experienced where I’m clearly tired but have a need to do more/ be more “productive”.. So I took a break from everything that caused me to feel overstimulated. (And like many of us that meant taking a break from my phone..)
For me it looked like shutting down my phone to do something else or deleting a social media platform.
Relating this back to my 30 day project for this month, I don’t think I would have done this project if I hadn’t realise that this whole time I felt restless from the overload of information.
I mean this whole time this was why the act of creating was ruined for me!! I spent so much time scrolling that I often felt the need to create in order to be productive. And then I would relate this back to me feeling art block making me not want to push myself to create.
When all I needed to do was take a step back from technology and UNPLUG.
(Let’s just I’m so glad God shed some light on this)
Where is Spring?
In other news..Spring has not arrived for me yet.. I’ve seen some many people be excited that spring is here for them during the month of March while I’m here freezing to death.
I mean sure there were some sunny days which made me feel hopeful. But even till the end of March I was still wearing my winter jacket..
Though I did get to enjoy reading:
My little project for March!
This month I actually did work on some art, though it wasn’t created for me it was more of a project where I worked on an invitation for an event at my school.
I honestly won’t talk too much about this piece because I’m not that proud of it but I will show you some of the process and how I got to the final result.
I feel like I used a very different process from my old days with digital art. It reminds me a lot of my art process for traditional art.
One of the things that I realized during my time working on this invitation is that I don’t use digital art for personal work anymore.. Which is not an issue it’s just an interesting realization.
I have come to a point in my art journey where I only use digital art for my professional work and traditional art for personal work and I just find that really freeing!
But enough about me let me hear about you! How was your March? Is it spring for you yet? And have you ever experienced feeling overstimulated from technology?
(P.S. Another big change is I changed the name of this publication. It was a little sudden but I like it. Also if you would like consider supporting this newsletter and my art project on my Ko-fi!)
Best wishes on your project! The undersea painting looks great!