Mad March Challenge

I decided to set myself a challenge to work in my sketchbook and kick start this years development of my work. So I have decided to try and work in my book for 30 minutes every day for a month...hence the Mad March challenge. This has coincided with the publication of my first booklet on working on your workbook (available on my folksy site). I will post some pictures on my facebook page of my progress and every few days will post here in a more detail.

DAY 1

For day one I decided to start off fairly simply and chose my favorite water soluble pen to work with.

Not really sure on what to do I started with a border and wrote about the challenge. After drawing some more boxes I began to doodle patterns in the boxes. As I worked I realised they would make good hand made stamps so continued to design 8 stamps.

DAY 2

On a Monday I wait at the local Rock climbing place while my daughter is climbing. So I got a basic kit together and decamped to the Pub that is linked to the club (only for a coffee of course) and got Artist block again AHHHHHHHH

I had a look in my bag and had the waste from the reinforcement rings I have used for my booklets. So I stuck these in and began with writing again. I then started doodling one of my favorite seed heads and slowly the page began to pull together. This time I expanded the amount of equipment I used. A mixture of text and doodling always works well especially when you fit the text around the doodling.

DAY 3

After suffering from artists block I decided that the focus today would be creating some background pages that I could then work on over the next few days. I had put together the mini rolling pins I designed on day 1 so decided to use them. I choose 3 colours to work with and added bubble wrap to my collection of equipment.

I began painting sections of the bubble wrap and printed the edges of the pages. Then using one of the rollers I added further detail to the page.

When I work I always have a sheet of paper to clean my rollers and stamps off on.This usually ends up being an interesting piece at the end and can be used in your book at a later date...so don't throw it away.

After embellishing with other stamps I finished the first double page and decided that as I had all the equipment out I may as well do 2 more.

 ...next pages

                            

So I now have 4 pages ready to work on. This is a good idea as sometimes the blank page can put you off and make your mind go blank.

Hopefully I have inspired you to have a go in your own book. If so I would love to see your work and if it is ok with you, post here on my blog...

Have fun

Anne xx