ICAD 2022

 It's been a long time between posts! If you follow me on instagram you'll know I've been painting pretty steadily for the last year and a half. 

When I started this blog my kids were still little,  I had one free morning a week with no work and no kids and that was my painting morning which inspired my blog name - what I did on Friday! 

Over the years I've sometimes had more time, but found it didn't equate to more creativity, in fact it usually meant more procrastination. For the last year or so I've set aside Sunday morning for painting, and I get my paints out no matter what, often I only have an hour or so before I have to drive someone somewhere, but it's enough time to get a little painting done. I also try to go out walking and sketching through the week, tiny fast 5 minute sketches help me to really look and give me subjects for my paintings. 

And now to ICAD!

ICAD is an index card a day challenge which runs through June and July it's the idea of @gypsy999 (on instagram or daisy yellow blog) you can find out more info there including daily and weekly prompts...which I will probably ignore and go my own way. I'm excited to be carving out a little bit of time in the evenings to do my icad a time of day when I'm low energy and usually in front of the tv. 

 

These are my warm up cards done before the 1st June, I will post again soon with my icads from the first week.

ICAD = Unexpected

I'm still keeping on with the index card a day challenge (ICAD), and I've just uploaded all my cards up to day 35 on my flickr stream.

After I took the gardening books back to the library I've had to look for inspiration in other places... Most unexpected was a series working from photos of artists, some from books and some searched up online. First was Picasso

some of Matisse

and Chagall.

Also this one, which I love, that's loosely based on the Matisse painting 'The Conversation'.

I wrote something in my journal about these -

I don't know what to think of them except fandom! But it's lovely to have this arena to do them in where it doesn't have to be for a reason, it doesn't have to be so they'll turn into cards or linocuts or work for an exhibition - they are just for their own sake, for the value of putting paint on paper and seeing what happens, and in this case to spend a moment thinking about artists I love...

It's not too late to join in with the ICAD challenge, it carries on 'til the end of July, you can find out all about it on the daisy yellow blog.

ICAD = daily art making

I'm glad to say I have jumped onto the index card a day challenge. It runs right through June and July and you can find out all about it at the daisy yellow blog. I've been uploading all my ICADs to my flickr stream, so you can see them all there. Here are a few selected ones. 

This was my first, a warm up card I made in May, and a reminder to me to enjoy the process and not to make it a chore - which is how my art making has felt this year.

Tammy (daisy yellow) provides daily prompts and weekly themes which you can use or ignore. 

This one was for the pyramid prompt. Most of the time so far I've been working with gouache. I have a pile of gardening books out of the library at the moment and kept thinking I should do some drawings from those - so this is the perfect opportunity. I have a bunch of index cards done now based on those books ...and probably still more to go on this theme. 

What's working for me is that the commitment is small - a little gouache sketch can be finished in 5 minutes, but it makes me feel like I'm making a tiny bit of progress each day. Because it's a small commitment it means there's less pressure on the result, yesterday I did two attempts at the same image and don't like either of them, but who cares it was 10 minutes wasted (or not, maybe something learned, maybe in a few weeks I'll look back and see something of value in them). Today is a new day and a new card. 

What's exciting is that some of these little playful things are turning into 'real' work. I've been inspired to make four little gardening theme lino prints, just in the nick of time, to be included in the memory, dream, mythexhibition which opens today at Tactile Arts (photos of these to follow!)

Hopefully I haven't jinxed the whole process by writing about it! I'm excited to see what comes out in the next month or so..... 

Ebb and flow of art

I think I've mentioned a couple of posts ago, that I haven't been feeling like making art for the last few months. I'm still doing little stuff, making cards and jotting things in sketchbooks, but have no enthusiasm to get paint on canvas...no big ideas!!

I'm trying not to stress out about it too much. I have a great quote in my journal for times like these.
I've quit and started again and again and I now know that starting is not better than quitting - it's just different. It's a circular dance of quitting and starting over and over again. - by Sark from her book Making your creative dreams real.
That's in my journal from 2009, so I know I've been here before!

The downside of this is that I'm part of a group show next month - Memory Dream Myth at Tactile arts, I have a handful of little paintings that I made at the beginning of the year, and they will have to do. Luckily there are 9 of us in the exhibition and everyone else is madly creating, so more wall space for them! I'm sure it'll be a lovely exhibition.

Here are a couple of journal pages on the memory theme that never made it out of the sketchbook!

Romford Rd mid 1980s. The day I bought my first Doc Martens and walked until I had blisters!

Gotts Park rose garden, part of the park we visited often as kids, now apparently neglected and possibly to become a community veggie garden if things I've read on the internet are correct.

Now it's the dry season I'm really happy to get outside as much as possible, walking at the beach and pottering in the garden - there are a lot of wet season weeds to deal with! I'm also thinking about taking part in the ICAD challenge (an index card a day challenge) which should be small enough to be doable, and no pressure to make capital A art, just to get back in the habit of doing a little something everyday. You can find out more about ICAD on the daisy yellow blog. So with any luck I'll be back with more of that soon!