I haven’t just been reading over the past couple of weeks or so, oh no. I’m tying up lots of proverbial loose ends insofar as a couple of projects are concerned, I am getting started on another two or three and I am also finally focusing on gaining a little more visibility in my visual arts-related endeavours.
In a sense, all of this overwhelms me slightly. I am not a person who thrives on burning out and, stupid as this sounds, there are people who do just that. Give them more to do and they’ll be ever more fired up, more focused, more switched on, more able. Cast me in the multi-tasking arena and I’ll fight it all the way, cursing myself to boot.
Hence this Bank Holiday weekend saw me focused on one thing only, the Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap organised by Kat of Kat Eye Studio. It did help that the weather was propely Mancunian (which, for the non-Mancunian among yourselves, means proverbially shit, cold and wet) and that all I really wanted to do was cracking open my new set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners while watching DVDs. During the week I am constantly torn between the writing/editing I need to do and the writing/drawing I want to do, and I must confess that reaching a time compromise for the latter is not coming easily.
So weeks ago I signed up for this fabulous new project because there is nothing like a nice fat deadline to get my creative gears in motion. Here’s what you do:
1- create five postcards;
2- have them printed so that you ain’t sending the original artwork;
3- despatch them to Kat in the first week of July;
4- await five postcards in return!
All the blow-by-blow details are to be found right here and please haste, as you can only sign up until 4 June which is this coming Saturday!
I’ve already designed three of my five postcards and I’ve centred them on writing and the writing life. I have found this small project really excellent in focusing my attention on the messages I want to convey and I urge anyone who is a little unsure about his/her artistic prowess to go for it regardless. There’s nothing like learning by doing my dear reader! And you don’t have to be Van Gogh to create something lovely (by the way, did you know that Vincent thought he was no good at drawing and that he most likely would never be? Yeah well...). There are already 228 of us... GO FOR IT!
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