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Day 1 - Magazines VS Blood-Pressure

So I'm a little behind schedule, but as long as I'm still blogging (and putting heart into it), I won't consider myself offtrack just yet.

To be fair, I had already googled "overcoming art block" yesterday, and found this post by Courtney Jordan

How Do You Make Art When You Are Feeling Blocked?


 And I went with the point that didn't give me heart palpitations
Pick up a magazine you don't mind sacrificing to the muse. Rip out anything that catches your eye-- words, advertisements, patterns. Make a collage. Either use the paper in a mixed media art project or start painting what you pulled together, even if it is just abstract impressions of these source materials. 
Now I don't own any magazines-- Yes, I'm a weird person who never browseses through magazines in supermarkets (the fact that I haven't been to a supermarket in 6 months has nothing to do with it).
I do have Photoshop though, and I'm positive that I can find an online magazine that won't raise my blood-pressure. So let's go.

Today's Sense-of-Accomplishment To-Do List

  • Find a magazine.
  • Create a blog-size compatible canvas in Photoshop... or should I just sketch them directly onto paper? Just go with Photoshop for now.
  • Export collage to blog.
Now it would be ridiculous to simply follow Courtney's suggestion without actually producing something original out of it, yes? The whole point of this method is to inspire people to
  • pick up a pencil and do some sketching

Whether I'll be able to produce anything worth mentioning is questionable, but let's say this--The sense of accomplishment should be coming from completing the list.. producing something beautiful was never the goal. Whether or not I'll get any enjoyment out of it is a completely different matter. 

And after an hour of browsing through these horrors people like to call magazines (which I found on  www.issuu.com), I was reminded why I never look at them to begin with.. specifically the ones under fashion. I was however able to complete my collage by grabbing snippets from one of the travel magazines, Escapism (https://issuu.com/squareupmedia/docs/eto1).

My pride and joy collage!

I.. actually do feel inspired.

I have a billion ideas inside my head now. Inspired enough to actually draw something? Maybe.. doubtful. But I want to scratch that last task off my list. Here come the heart palpitations and anxieties again. I haven't touched any of my tools for so long.

Maybe if I think of it this way-- I can tank a 22 Eye of Azshara (it's a WoW thing) with my eyes closed, and even if I failed I wouldn't feel bad.. it's just a game, yes?
I'll just have to think of myself as scrub starting over and learning the process with all the frustrations that come along with it. Frustration is part life. What would life be without it. I'll do it.


Today's Resolve & Outcomes

I started late, and missed the deadline by 30 min, but I'm not a superhero who can perform a 180 degree transformation overnight. More importantly, I made something. Yes, they are only little thumbnail scribbles, and each one took about 5 mins, but 15 min of drawing, I'll take it.

So here are my thumbnail scribbles. I would have drawn more of the billion ideas I have in my head, but keeping the deadline is another part of the accomplishment deal. 


Courtney Jordan's tip to poke around with your thoughts and feel like creating something difinitely works, thanks dear. I even implemented one of her other points, #7: 
Listen to a random Playlist-- Sometimes old habits in the studio are deadening, so just change it up a little with new music. It’ll awaken something in you.
Worked great!

Looking forward to tomorrow and whatever new ideas might bring :-)






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