My new One Hour Art Challenge: Number 1
I have been struggling with creating art and being focused these past couple of weeks. Usually I have a series that I am working on and I know how many pieces I want to make, and an idea of what I want to be included in the series. But lately I have just struggled with getting anything done.
I think it’s because part of my focus is on the MATS (Make Art That Sells) e-course, and I’m trying to learn how to make artwork that is more of a sell-able product then just creating artwork for its own sake. (That sounds like such a sell out but it’s actually not. I’m learning to be a better artist.)
So anyway, I decided to come up with a challenge for myself as a way to get me motivated and working on artwork again. I call it the One Hour Art Challenge. The idea is that I only have one hour to create a piece of artwork, and then I have to stop. The top image is my artwork from my first challenge. I stopped after 1 hour and 20 minutes (I just couldn’t help myself). I liked where I was going with it and decided that with just a bit more work I could finish it and have a piece of artwork that I was very happy with.
The bottom left image is my final piece, which took about another 1 1/2 hours to finish. I am very happy with the way it turned out. You can view a much bigger image of what I am now calling the Vintage Mermaid with Bird.
What I learned from my One Hour Art Challenge is that I can come up with a great art idea in a small amount of time, with randomly choose images. I also learned that I don’t need to have everything perfectly cutout and arranged in order for it to be visually appealing. (I also learned that I can’t leave something just so-so when it comes to cutouts, I need clean cutouts in all my art.)
And I learned that having just a one hour window of time is great to get ideas and art concepts on the pallet. But for me to really be happy with my art, I need to put a few more hours into it to clean it all up and tie it all together into something that I can be really proud of. So I will continue to give myself one hour art challanges. But I will also give myself more time to finish it once that hour is over. (I just finished another One Hour Art Challenge. I’ll be posting that and the final image later this week.)
