Creative Challenge 9 Results: Mixed Media

I kicked off the year by sharing some goals and dreams for 2015. One of the most important of these was to get back in touch with my artistic roots, which I quickly decided would be much more fun to do with friends. And so began the Creative Challenge— a way for creatives from around the world, to come together online and tackle one artistic project per month.

Challenge #9: Mixed Media
Since this Creative Challenge began, I’ve been preaching that rules don’t matter. That we don’t have to follow the assigned projects each month, or finish within the timeframe that was allotted. I’ve encouraged our community to think outside the box and really let those creative juices flow in whatever way works for each individual artist.

My problem is, I like rules and it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable to break them. This month, I broke 3.

1. It took me almost six weeks to finish this project, when my guideline was four.
2. I didn’t even really follow the prompt which was “mixed media.”
3. I used my computer.

I’m not really jazzed about these results, but my lesson this month, (or month and a half) has been that it’s okay to make mistakes. Art doesn’t have to be perfection, or even close to it. And that it’s okay to simply create for the sake of creating, without having a practical use for your piece at the end of it.

My plan for this project was to paint a few watercolor backgrounds, and then lay some lovely hand-lettering on top, to create some truly custom artwork that I could sell in my Etsy shop.

Creating my simple watercolor backgrounds were easy and relaxing. Since I had my supplies out, once my backgrounds were done, I treated myself to a completely directionless painting session. This was the best part of this month’s challenge. I just let myself be abstract (which is not my thing), and did a little exercise where I tested out different brush strokes.

The most enjoyable was painting the these two. I let out my inner girly-girl and did some floral doodles with fancy lettering with no apology.

I should have stopped here, but I felt like I was missing that second material that would make this a true mixed media piece, so, glutton for punishment that I am, I dug out my calligraphy supplies.

It only took me five minutes to remember that calligraphy is way harder than it looks.

After hours and hours of writing the same phrases over and over again, I resigned to the fact that I was never going to be 100% happy with how it was turning out. At least not in this session.

In a last-ditch attempt to get some hand-lettering into this challenge, I tried my hand at some marker calligraphy, after joining up with the talented Dawn Nicole’s Hand-lettering Group.

I think this type of lettering has the potential to be really fun, but at this point, I was just ready for this project to be put to rest. In the end, I did stick to my original plan to combine my watercolor and calligraphy, but I did it via my computer, which I had wanted to stay away from for all of these challenges.

After scanning in my lettering and artwork, I put them together in Photoship and the result was not as cringe-worthy as I was anticipating. I did, however decide just to keep these for myself instead of posting them for sale. I don’t feel like they are the best representation of my talents, and I was taught that your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest piece.

Even with all the self-doubt and frustration that this challenge brought, I’m still excited to do more of this in the future, even if it’s just for my own enjoyment!

This was not the most popular challenge to date, but we still had a few gals from our wonderful Creative Challenge Community join me in creating some awesome projects:

 

Our tenth challenge (photography) is already underway! If you’d like to join in on this challenge, or any of the other challenges planned for the year, we would LOVE to have you on board. Until next month…#gocreatives