Twenty-Nine Project

Today is the first anniversary of finishing (and second anniversary from starting) my Twenty-Nine Project.  Can you believe how fast time has flown by?  Twenty-Nine is a daily art project which I began on my 29th birthday and continue through the last year of my twenties.   For each day of the year I completed a 7″x7″ piece of art using journal prompts for inspiration and using various mediums and styles.  The result is a collection of 367 (it was a leap year) drawings and quotes.  

To see the whole collection, you can go here.  Below are some of my favorites and some of the lessons I learned from this project.  

Three of my favorite pieces out of this project are those three below.  The first (left) is a drawing with colored pencils on a black paper.  This is one of my favorite methods of drawing.  I feel that bringing up color and shape from the darkness evokes so much emotion and mystery into a work.  The second (middle) is a drawing using watercolor pencil and black marker.  I am in love with spring blooms which makes me slightly bias for this particular piece but the play of pink, blue, and black make this piece for me.   And the last (right) is a drawing using gel pen in a simple contour line drawing of me holding my baby nephew on his first day in the world.

This project allowed me to play with different mediums that I don’t usually use for larger pieces.  I was able to use this small space to doodle and experiment.  Through this project I found a love for watercolor pencils as a medium (left).  I’m a large fan of the control that the pencil gives, but the painting-like qualities that can be produced with a little added water.   By accident I found that gel pens blend with water.   This allowed me to have bold colors but to also add a layer of depth (middle).  I found out that using black lithocrayon for outlines filled in with inktense blocks creates a stained glass appearance (right). 

I was also able to play with different artistic styles.  Generally I consider myself as having a very realistic style.  I was able to let go a little and try out different more-abstract ways.  There are pieces which are simple contour lines with pops of color in the background (left), close-ups of everyday objects (mid-left), abstract color combinations (mid-right), and I even played around with shaping the mat in an irregular pattern (right). 

A couple of the prompts in the project had me emulate some of my favorite artists, such as The Scream by Edvard Munch (left) and Vase with Twelve Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh.  By closing examining a piece of are and trying to imitate it, you can learn a lot about the original artist’s techniques – which is probably why many of the great artists often studied the work of those who came before them. 

Several of the days were filled with quotes and practicing my lettering skills.  Each quote shows words to live by.  Some represent quotes that have been my favorite for a long time, while other were found through working on this project.

In addition to the new things that learned by experimenting with mediums and styles, there were also other lessons from this project.  It is so much work to do a project of this scale – to prep the pieces to the right size, develop prompts, complete the piece itself, mat them, photograph them, and post them.  I never imagined the amount of time and energy it would take to complete these steps and the strength and dedication that it would take to stay on task to make sure that it got completed.  This year time-span ended up being a difficult year for me and having this project which encouraged me to create something small everyday was very therapeutic and healing.  I also learned that not every piece would be perfect and that was okay.  Sometimes it’s more about the process.  About the thoughts and emotions involving in creating.