What I learned from doing a 30 day art challenge
April-ish Snippets from my art corner
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!!)
Hi! It’s been a while. How have you been?
So in my last newsletter I shared that I was doing a thirty month art challenge and I’m sorry to disappoint but it did not go well. So in this newsletter I want to talk to you about:
The 30 day art challenge and it’s struggles
Making art slowly
What I’m going to do with the art
What went wrong
Well everything..
I started this challenge on the wrong foot and as the days progressed I kept falling behind. And eventually after a week or so I gave up life got a little too busy for me to be worrying about this challenge.
“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.” —Last month’s newsletter
I think one of the things that went wrong with this challenge is that I didn’t allow myself to experiment like I said I would. Instead I just put a lot of pressure on myself to make each piece perfect for the person who receives it.
So yeah I’m a quitter and altogether in the month of April I only made 4 small art pieces to give away. But for me that’s still is a WIN!
Making art Slowly
This challenge reminded me a lot of my days creating on Instagram which weren’t great. I was always creating and I barely had the time to think about what I was creating.
You could say that I like creating art slowly because I don’t want to feel any pressure.
Making art should be fun and enjoyable and it shouldn’t be forced.
Another part of making art slowly for me is not multi-tasking by listening to a YouTube video or whatever it is I’m doing while creating. Sometimes I need some quiet and with all the noise in our daily life for me to enjoy art making I need a place that is just for me, God and my art.
This whole month I’ve been trying to think with this new mindset. It’s especially interesting when I hear other artist spending like six years of their life just to complete one painting. It’s all about having patience and enjoying the process. I hope I can reach that point one day.
So what now?
Well I was thinking that I should still randomly distribute them. Which I’ll tell you about that in my next newsletter so stay tuned until then, but back to you.
What would you do differently if you did this challenge yourself? Living life slowly also relates back to slow living. What would you like to slow down and be in the moment for?
(P.S. I know I’m a little late with sending this newsletter and that’s because I needed more time to flesh out my thoughts.)
This is so interesting to read. I have tried the 30 and 100 days challenge so often but often ended up giving up. My streak of success is always at 15 , there I feel no pressure to create and know I get always an extra day to work on a piece. This June however we decided with a bunch of friends to send each other vacations pictures and draw every day. And for the 1st time in my life I stuck to it. I think the big factor that helped outside of the community is that we did it for us, we had no pressure to post it on social media, and we knew what we would draw everyday abd had like 20 to 30min to do it. I think we will do it quarterly now and I am already excited for the next round. I am writing a post about it because I feel this setting helps relieve a lot of the pressure social media put on perfect 30 days challenges