I recently completed an artistic challenge. I challenged myself to make art in my sketchbook every day for 60 days. I did it as a personal artistic challenge as part of My Peak Challenge. You can find out more about MPC here
http://www.mpc2016.com/
MPC is basically a challenge to get healthier and more physically fit, but also to challenge yourself to break out of your comfort zone in whatever way you feel you need to in order to be your best self.
During the fall and early winter I had been struggling to figure out how making art fit into my life. How to juggle or balance taking care of my kids, the house, my own personal needs, and make time to make art. So out of this struggle I came up with my 60 day challenge.
I decided that one of the things that was holding me back was simply the idea that me making art was less important than all the other things that need to be done every day. I could easily put off making art until tomorrow, for instance, but I couldn't easily put off feeding the kids their dinner until tomorrow. The problem with that kind of thinking was that I have been completely miserable when I get stuck in that attitude. So I decided to take the advice of Pablo Picasso, one of my least favorite popular artists, and to remind myself that, while I don't particularly like Picasso's art, I admire his volume of work and his work ethic. So as I picked up my drawing tools and my sketchbook each day I reminded myself of Picasso's words:
"Inspiration exsists, but it has to find you working."
In the end that shift from thinking of making art as the thing I could put off to thinking of art as my real work, the only work I have ever really loved, helped me to see a path ahead of me that I actually feel good about instead of just worrying that I would never find the time.
If you are interested in looking at more of my 60 days project (minus a few that I just didn't feel like showing!) you can find most of the sketchbook pages in my 60 day challenge album at Flickr
If you want to follow my art on Facebook, here is a link to my page
https://m.facebook.com/Nora-Allsup-Gardner-Art-1713339342284252/
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