365 Bons Jours/365 Jolly Good Days

Anne Guiberteau who lives near Paris, France is creating daily in French at 365 Bons Jours and in English at 365 Jolly Good Days! She explains, "Each day, I leave a small poster in the street, in a public park, the subway...with these words either "Bonne journée" or "Have a good day". Which means exactly the same.

Why did you decide to do this project?  I decided to create my blogs after reading the magazine Flow.

It's a friendly message, a faithful smile for the passers-by and for the persons that visit my blogs.

Also, each day, I quote the first sentence of a book written by an author dead or alive, ranging from Hemingway to Indridason, Edgar Allen Poe to Colette....And I also post photos of people from here, there and everywhere. and good mood photos. Sharing also my love for books written in any place and in any language in the world. And my love for people met here or there.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? It looked so exciting, challenging...and it is! It has affected my life because it's a daily "job" that I enjoy, and because I made interest and concern all the people around me. I wish to share my blogs with people that I don't know. I have already started!

See all of Anne's Jours HERE and Days HERE. 

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light.

Meg Paulette is taking a photo day for a year in her There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light project...

Why did you decide to do this project? Ever since I tried and failed to do a project like this a few years ago I have wanted to try again.  I kept waiting for a significant date or "the right time" and finally on a totally random day at entirely the wrong time I actually started again.  I want art to be a part of my daily life, even if it is in a relatively small way.  I want to improve as a photographer, and just like anything that requires practice.  And especially with photography you get the added bonus of documenting important things in your life and it is super cool to be able to look back and remember a little piece of each day.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I joke in my first post that the last time I did one of these projects my whole life basically imploded.  It's sort of true, though of course I can't give all the credit to my project, but when you literally "focus" on your life everyday amazing things seem to happen, and you can't continue on without being conscious of what's going on around you. Which speeds up the natural process of growth, as an artist and as a person.  I'm ready for that again right now, a jump start that will get me out of my comfortable rut and not let me put off my own creative work "til tomorrow".

See all of Meg's photos HERE. 

My Motivation

Ashlee Boyd in New Zealand is creating daily in her My Motivation project. She explains, "This is my 'young designer's motivation blog'. I am a big believer in the power of words and motivation, so I've decided to keep up my own motivation by completing an art piece everyday with some powerful words of creative wisdom."

Why did I decide to do this project? I have been learning a lot from tutors and designers recently, and just can't keep track of all the valuable information that could help me in my design future. One of these things being how easy it is to keep up creativity. And so, this blog is a place for me to be creative everyday and keep track of some valuable things I've learnt. This means I can hopefully inspire others as well as use it for myself to look back on in the years to come.

How has the project affected my life? Never before have I been so eager to continue learning during a university break, until I started this project. Already a few things I have to say have inspired close friends and it's made me feel, for lack of a better word, totally awesome. I can't wait to see how this affects me when I go back to the stress of university life.

See all of Ashlee's motivations HERE.

Anita's 365 Zentangles

Anita Aspfors Westin of Rättvik, Dalarna, Sweden is creating 365 zentangles!

Why did you decide to do this project? I decided to do this project now because I need to. I made a project 3 years ago with collages and assemblages. It was great, though I had some trouble to make it to the end. I moved from Stockholm during the year and that made me take some breaks. I have missed doing a project for some time now so I am ready for it. I started doing zentangles because I thought it would be a good idea to let my students try this. Well I was sucked myself in zentangeling so then I got the idea to make this in a project. It is fun and relaxing and it suits me to make something that is easy to do but make it regularly.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? This question I think I would answer when this project is finished. 

The project Collages and assemblages I started 2012 and finished 2013 affected my life in several ways. I made new experiences of different materials. I learned about myself, about my limits and I found more freedom in my own work as a painter. Yes in fact my personal touch in my work is more obvious today because of that project.  My studio contains a lot of other stuff than before! My stress-level is under control now and my focus is much more in the work I do. I guess that means I will do some more project after this one I´ve just started!

See all of Anita's zentangles HERE. 

Dragon-A-Day

Phillippe St. Gerard in Brooklyn, NY has created a Dragon-A-Day since 2009!

 

Why did you decide to do this project? Dragons have always been a passion of mine, artistically as well as in general, and I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil. When I went to art school, drawing became synonymous with 'work" instead of "that thing I do for the sheer pleasure of it." Basically, my focus shifted so that I was only making art in order to get work (updating my portfolio, making new marketing material, stuff like that) or to complete the projects that I had gotten. When I fell into a dry spell, my work suffered but I didn't realize it. A friend of mine suggested a cool idea that I should draw, so I (gasp!) actually tried to do it in my spare time. I then realized how rusty my skills had gotten and decided that I should draw every day, regardless of what else I was doing. I knew I needed a theme that I wouldn't get bored with, so I chose to do dragons. 

 

 

 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? It's robbed me of a lot of sleep.

 

But seriously, people are often impressed by the fact that I'm still doing it, or they're really impressed when they hear that I've been doing this for more than 5 years when they hear about it for the first time. This isn't to say that I haven't learned a few things, though.

 

One of the first things I learned was that I do best with some kind of feedback, but I don't really need it. Once upon a time when Facebook integration with RSS feeds worked better, people I knew paid more attention to Dragon-A-Day, and I took their suggestions and jokes and ran with them. As it slowly became phased out I found myself talking with myself more and more, and Dragon-A-Day sort of became this one-sided dialogue with myself, with a small recurring cast to help illustrate these conversations.

 

Also, since it went from open forum to one-sided self-critique, I've come to look hard at the artistic crutches and conventions that I find myself relying on, and have been trying to wean myself off of them. It's not like I've been doing any sort of "year in review" or anything; I just realize things like "hey, I've been drawing scales this way on a lot of dragons," every so often, so I start trying to draw them differently.

Stuff like that.

It's also made me a bit philosophical, sometimes having (shorter now) discussions with myself about what a dragon even is, because of the various interpretations across cultures and media- I'll freely admit that my perceptions were colored a bit heavily by Western pop culture and the obvious Asian influences with little room inbetween. I've been trying to dig up less-widely known legends in my spare time looking for draconic creatures, and have not been disappointed.

Reading your site made me realize that I've been using the same media (mainly pencils with the occasional array into the digital realm), so I've been trying my hand at pens. I've kind of fallen in love with ballpoint pen drawing. Thanks for that.

Finally, the last and probably most important thing is that inspiration can be found any old place, as long as you're willing to let it. Dragons based on all kinds of things from my daily life have come to fill my little sketchbooks, and subsequently the internal/external dialogue I've been having with my readers and followers.

See all of Phillippe's dragons HERE.

Daily Type Grind

Denton Pretorius in Cape Town, South Africa created Daily Type Grind, a 26 day challenge to improve his creativity and type design skills...

Why did you decide to do this project?  The decision to start the Daily Type Grind was entirely spontaneous, and perhaps a practise run for the 2015 ’36Days of Type’ Instagram event. Every day I produced an upper-case letter of the latin alphabet consecutively for 26 days exploring form, technique and art direction, whilst simultaneously improving speed and my own processes.

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? Completing this project was a huge achievement for me. It required intense discipline to not make excuses and to schedule time aside from client work and socialising. I also started to recognise creative patterns of a system that would work best, that I could now bring into new projects. The feeling of momentum was what kept me going towards the final more difficult days and when the end goal started to visually present itself, it felt rewarding. I have definitely improved my knowledge on type form and the endless possibilities of type design, as well as now having a handful of potential designs to explore and refine into useable typefaces.

 

 

See all of Denton's letters HERE. 

Daily Story Seeds

Scott Walker in Los Angeles, CA is creating Daily Story Seeds. He explains, "DSS is a free daily email containing a story seed: an idea for, or the beginning of, a potential story. Daily Story Seeds usually include an element of the fantastic, even though they’re often inspired by factual posts/podcasts I’ve come across."

Image by Conor Mayling

Why did you decide to do this project?

It was a gradual, and almost unintentional, decision.

I often come across articles in Feedly that spark ideas for stories. In late February, I read a post about a Buddha statue that was found to have a mummy inside it, and I thought it would be so easy to grow a story out of this little seed. So I shared the idea over Twitter:

"Today's #storyidea 'Scan Reveals This Buddha Statue Has A Mummy Inside' http://bit.ly/1EhuNgl"

By the next day, I had decided I would tweet a story idea each day, changed the hashtag to #storyseed, and posted this:

 

“Today's #storyseed: 'The Grand Godzilla Hotel.' Godzilla is the new bellboy at a distinguished hotel. http://bit.ly/1AGvtJx“

A few days later, I realized these daily tweets were getting lost in the the Twitter stream, and I was also hitting the 140-character Twitter limit. So I talked to a few folks who had responded to my daily tweets and asked them if they would sign up to receive them via email. They said yes, so I set up a Mailchimp list, worked up a serviceable logo, and officially launched Daily Story Seeds.

I would say this started as an idea I had to share publicly and formally (i.e., a Daily Story Seed) something I was already experiencing privately and informally (i.e., I would have inspirations for stories each morning while going through my RSS feed).

While it took me a week or so to figure out exactly what Daily Story Seeds should be, the decision to turn it into a 365 project happened almost instantly, and the reason was simple: I have long been searching for a 365 project that was (a) manageable, (b) fun, and (c) potentially interesting to other people. I feel like I stumbled into just that with Daily Story Seeds.

 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? (feel free to include some specific examples of new/unusual things you've experienced)

It’s still relatively early days (the official launch was March 4th), but I love the fact that I feel obligated to stick with this project. And sticking with this project has already helped me find new confidence as a creative. And *that* has given me a ton of inspirational energy to tackle additional ideas I’ve long wanted to complete (one of them is another daily project!).

Get Scott's Daily Story Seeds in your inbox by signing up HERE!