Billie's Art Journal Daily 365

Willa  “Billie”  Carter in Avondale, Arizona is creating Art Journal Daily 365...



Why did you decide to do this project? I have a BFA in Painting but working at my day job in healthcare left me little creative energy and I hadn’t been painting or drawing for several months so in an effort to get back to my commitment to artistic creativity, I had assigned a daily task in my iPhone to do one art thing daily since September last year (ignoring it every day when it’s reminder chimed at 4pm).   Even though I had seen the movie, Julie and Julia, I was clueless that this 365 stuff not only existed, but it had gone viral.  So when I found “A Daily Creativity Journal 365” on the shelf at Michaels Crafts here in Phoenix on January 2nd during their 70% off sale I was pleasantly surprised and more than willing to take it on.  I decided to do one mixed–media art page daily because I always wanted to learn some of the techniques I have been following in magazines and TV craft programs over the years.  I normally work in oil and acrylic on canvas but I had collected many art supplies for some future date when I had time to learn the mixed-media techniques seen in the programs, books, and articles. The art supplies were spilling out of my office/studio creating storage issues so it was either create or get rid of some of them, so it was serendipidous to stumble upon the book when I did. With the prompts from the book I have completed 6 weeks now of art pages with some minor trepidation,  for the most part I am really pleased with my level of commitment thus far.  I Love the format of using prompts because it reminds me of my Art School days and really challenges my creativity.



How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? Having to create a mixed-media art page each day keeps me focused on creativity all day now, I look at the next day’s project as soon as I complete and post the project for the current day.  This gives me time to let my mind wander through the challenge,  mull over the possibilities, and think about what art supplies I have to pull from before I actually get into creating the project in the evenings.  I am excited about learning and trying new art techniques again and am not spending my entire evenings channel and internet surfing anymore.  I‘m getting encouraging and complimentary comments from friends and family on Facebook who are following my daily updates.  I have learned and experienced so many new ways of exercising my creativity, (I made encaustic media from a youtube video and finished my first encaustic piece yesterday),  and am uncovering a lot about my creative process as well.  I realize now when I was blocked before I was prone to giving up and have more than a few unfinished paintings over the years to prove it, but knowing that there will be another prompt tomorrow encourages me to stay on task so they won’t pile up.  I have also learned to just let go and let the art happen.  In painting I was so process oriented from the sketch to the finished piece and with mixed-media I don’t have to be so much.  I can start with an idea or just throw something, anything on the page to see what happens, and that I’ve discovered; is when the magic happens.



See all of Bille's journal entries HERE.

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