Heart of the Day

Anette Bäck of Skövde, Sweden is creating one heart daily in 2019 for her project Heart of the Day...

Why did you decide to do this project? A few years ago I got the book 365: A Daily Creative Journal by Noah Scalin from a dear friend. A perfect opportunity for me to challenge my creativity. In my professional life I am the head of an IT department, which is a fulfilling and challenging job in many ways and I think I'm pretty good at it. But it isn't the most creative job.

I wanted to start the project on January 1st. But... for several years I had forgotten it, but not this year. This year I started my project. I am going to continue as long as it is challenging and fun. Hopefully I will reach the finish line at December 31st. But if the "want feeling" is replaced with a "must feeling" I have promised myself to change the plan. I don't need any more musts in my life!

I chose hearts as my project for two reasons:
1. It's quite a simple shape
2. I associate it with positive feeling and hope that it will help me carry on if (or rather when) the inspiration comes. 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? I have just started my project and so far I have learned that I can't bring myself to destroy books. This project is also teaching me to settle with "good enough". Normally, I am kind of a "good girl type" that always wants to do the best (preferably to perfection), but the time restraint when creating one heart every day while working and taking care of everyday stuff doesn’t leave room for perfection. It is a really valuable experience for me.See all of Anette's project on Instagram at @heartoftheday and on her site HERE

I Doodle on Newspapers

Ankita Shinde in Mumbai, India is spending year on the project I doodle on newspapers...

Why? I like doodling. Don’t like to read the newspapers. That’s why. This blog is an attempt to make me hold the newspaper in my hand everyday to doodle somewhere on it. And read a news or two while I’m at it. Here, I post my everyday doodles on the newspapers.

This is an art experiment. How art can help developing a certain habit. It started as a fun thing and now when I see, I have a lot of fun quirky portraits of people with me, doodled on the newspapers. And I now know a little more of what's happening in the world around me. I had a lot of fun doing this and the project still continues..
Hope you all enjoy!

Why did I decide to do this project? I realised that how much ever I try to cope up with current news, I would fail. I would make a point to hold the newspaper in my hand everyday, do it for a couple of days and then forget. I had even subcribed to news apps in my phone, but didn't help. I thought it was high time I must do something about this and this idea struck.

How has this project affected me? I am surprised how I am so excited every morning to go and grab the newspaper before anyone, to search people's face and decide who is going to get doodled today! :D Although my excitement is purely for doodling, but in the process I happen to read a news or two. And I am so glad that I finally managed to trick myself into reading news daily :)

See all of Ankita's doodles HERE.

(My) Artplay at 60 ~ Using the Daily News as Inspiration

Rebecca Grace Jones in Shepherdstown, West Virginia has returned with a new month long daily project (My) Artplay at 60 ~ Using the Daily News as Inspiration

She explains the project as, "Using the cover photo and story of the Washington Post newspaper for inspiration to create a piece of artwork, in image and word, every day in the month of December 2013 and present the results as a show in January 2014"

Why did I decide to do this project and how has doing a daily project affected my life?

As an artist I have two needs ~ 1) the challenge of creating something and
2) someone to show it to.

This means that in the sixty years I’ve been walking around on this earth I’ve not evolved much from the child who would bound out of bed in the morning eager to see what I could scribble together with my crayons and then run to show it to my mother.

As a small child I was able to come up with my own inspiration for crayon scribbles. When I started attending school I learned that it was possible to make things from the suggestions of others. It was also quite satisfying, because then they would acknowledge my accomplishment in the form of a rating system called a “grade”.  This was different from my mother’s reaction in that it might not always be favorable, but the recognition fed me nonetheless.

The challenge of creating something from a presented idea became a puzzle to solve, an activity upon which I thrived. This made me a good art student through graduate school and a decent free-lance illustrator early in my career.

The audience has changed over the years from mother, to teacher, to art director, and now to you, the public. It’s been necessary to evolve, at least to a degree, in order to accept the levels of acknowledgement I receive and continue to produce my art regardless. As a child it’s possible that, if my mother hadn’t gushed over everything I showed her, I might not have pursued the life of an artist. Now, I find I’m able to, well, actually, I need to create things whether you, my audience, like them or not, though, of course, it’s nice when you do. I don’t think I could continue if what I created was being completely ignored, but I am able to find the motivation I need to keep working in even a limited amount of attention.

Having spent 2012 completing the 365 projects from Noah Scalin’s book, 365: A Daily Creativity Journal, where I was given ideas, I find now, that in order to keep up the daily practice of creating, I am in a position of having to make up my own assignments. That’s where this latest project comes in ~ Using the cover photo and story from the Washington Post for inspiration, I find something to draw or collage and write about, either as a synopsis of the story or a poem in haiku form. I enjoy writing, particularly constructing the haiku in its 5-7-5 syllable structure, because of the puzzle-solving element involved.

This project, the working title of which is (My) Artplay at 60 ~ Using the Daily News as Inspiration, gives me the structure of being there every day and presenting me with a challenge of finding something inspiring enough to be creative. When I post the artwork (or artplay) and word-thing on my blog, www.wordkeepers.blogspot.com, I get to see if it has any effect on anyone.

The incentive for this project was an invitation to have a show at the Fire House Gallery in Charles Town, WV for the month of January 2014, during which I will turn 60. It made me want to do something fresh and interesting.

How has this changed my life? It is the difference between getting up in the morning and being presented with a blur of things to do, and bounding out of bed to get the newspaper to see what today’s assignment is, and then to my computer to see if you got, or didn’t get, what I did yesterday. It’s what I need to do.

See all of Rebecca's project HERE.