Index cards 57-61 from the final days of Daisy Yellow's Index-Card-a-Day Challenge 2012. |
So. It's finally happened. ICAD 2012 has drawn to a close. I finished off my final and 61st card this afternoon. I can't believe I actually did it. 61 index cards. Two months ago, I thought, "What the heck. I'll give it a try. I might not be able to do it, but we'll try it out anyway." So I did. And this is the result.
For my final 5 cards, I wanted to do a bit of everything that I liked best about the previous cards, so this is what I ended up with: a bold and colourful mandala with my watercolour pencils (not sure about this one, but it sure is colourful!), a quick sketch of the trees and hills outside my house, a drawing of a dragonfly based off a photo cut from a magazine and glued in the upper left corner of the index card, another mandala, and a final celebratory card which I liberally decorated with gel pen fireworks and star stickers. Celebrate! 61 days of creating art every day is certainly worth celebrating.
Here are all 61 cards in a stack. Don't they look nice?
What I liked best about ICAD:
- It ran for a limited amount of time. It's one thing to say, "I'm going to create an index card every day, and it's totally another thing to say, "I'm going to create an index card every day for 2 months." The second has a time limit. You can count down your remaining cards. You feel motivated to create a card every day because you know that at the end you can look back at all of them and know that you did it. You can begin it, and you can also finish it and move on to something else.
- Index cards are small. Journal pages are large. A bit intimidating, especially on those days when your energy is low. But an index card is small enough that it's easy to just create a tiny bit of art to fill it up.
- Index cards are cheap and disposable. You don't have to worry about messing it up, because it's easy to throw it out and start again. As it turned out, I didn't have to start again with any of my cards but simply having that option made me able to create more freely.
- And, best of all, now I have a habit of creating art daily again! I had fallen out of that habit. My art journal had been untouched for weeks. My sketchbook had only a few recent entries. Now, I'm back into the habit of art everyday and I have all sorts of new ideas and plans for future creative endeavours.
Finally, here are all of my cards all laid out together! (Each row is a week.) I love looking at them all together like that. I see a lot of mandalas, and a lot of the colour green, and a lot of drawings from or inspired by nature - in short, a lot of my favourite things! Enjoy, and I hope to see you all in August!
(Click on the image to view larger.) |
[See all ICAD posts.]