Comfortable challenges

A challenge is something that will stretch your powers, with the likelihood of confirming them; you want to take on a challenge because you have confidence enough that you can succeed. A threat is a task that seems beyond your powers to accomplish or cope with.
John Holt How Children Learn

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Recently I stopped by a Julie's Pictures blog, who sets herself yearly challenges. Her first one was to walk for at least one mile from home everyday and record what she saw. Her friend, Fiona, just started a challenge to stitch a small picture everyday – they are so simple, yet interesting and visually pleasing.

I admire and respect their dedication, but recently I came to realise that for now I’m unable to commit myself to one year long daily challenges. I set myself simpler goals, like trying to make Russian pirozhki following these two Russian recipes: with apples and meat.

Recently I also joined Everyday Matters group, which has weekly drawing challenges. There is a list of 193 previous ones and so I’m trying to complete one old one alongside each new one. Here is the watercolour painting of autumn leaves for the challenge number 34.

Procrastionation & masking fluid

I’m still procrastinating on starting any new craft projects, but I got few more supplies today and there are many ideas slowly brewing inside my head and beginning to feel closer to their realisation.

In meantime my friend brought me some tulips, so I enjoyed sketching them.

Tried using the masking fluid for the first time – interesting - now that I have a better understanding of how it works I really want to try again, maybe I’ll sketch a cityscape.

Studio Journal

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
Richard Bach “Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story”

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This is the quote I'm going to put on the first page of my new studio journal tomorrow. I used to struggle trying to keep various journals, diaries, notebooks with quotes and sketchbooks until I took Sharon B’s online Studio Journal course. Throughout six lessons with the aid of design exercises she tried to get us into a habit of consistently using our studio journals. I loved learning new to me design tricks and now can see them used everywhere from packaging to the modern paintings. The other beauty of taking the course was a very active and inspirational forum where students shared tips, images of their work and the links to the relevant articles or websites.

However, the main lesson for me was the freedom of putting everything into ONE studio journal. And after six weeks I have one complete journal full of photos, images, quotes, my own writing, samples of thread, drawings and design ideas. And looking through it results in new ideas. For example after reading Shirley Trevena's Taking Risks with Watercolour I realised that for years I only tried to paint separate objects (mostly fruits and vegetables) instead of attempting to create a whole painting. And while thinking of subject to paint I remembered the photo taken in the park (and added to my journal).

And used it to paint an autumn leaf fall. This simple painting is far from perfect and I can point out many mistakes to you, but it is the first complete painting I’ve done since childhood and I felt fantastic doing it.