ICAD 2015 has left the building

All 61 index cards, pinned and clipped to the incredibly purple wall next to the art table in the workroom.

Last year — the first time I did ICAD — I was acutely aware of the need to build the habit of doing a card every day through June and July.  I was glad to have Tammy’s lists of prompts and themes as anchors — ideas that I could count on to help me come up with something when my own thoughts couldn’t pin anything down.

This year was different. I knew I could do it; I realized that there was nothing in the challenge that required my daily output to mean anything to anyone but myself. The cards didn’t have to be gorgeous or skillful — they didn’t even have to be good. I used this year’s ICAD as a chance to try new things, to have a new look at old things, sometimes to simply play.

I rarely used the daily prompts; if I liked a theme I went with it for as long as it appealed to me. I played with paints and textures, colors and line. I snipped words and images from magazines and books. I made marks with pens and whatever else seemed like it could, well, make the sort of marks I wanted to make.  I sometimes worked in silence, but more often than not at least semi-aware of the TV on somewhere nearby — in fact, the last couple of weeks I’ve been consciously working interesting bits of dialogue into text.

I’ve learned a bit more about letting go, and I’ve become a little better at recognizing what’s important to me. And I know that creating — making — every day is at the very center of that.

Imperfect circles

Warm up #8 for Daisy Yellow ICAD 2015: very imperfect circles, drawn in Sharpie with my left hand just to sort of fill the page, then some practice blending colored pencils to fill them in and fine Sharpie pen web background.

Top Ten List

I didn’t quite follow Daisy Yellow’s instructions for this warm up — I forgot about the “use a different writing tool for each one” part. (Perhaps I subconsciously did it on purpose — I am so attached to my Sharpie pens and so not a fan of things that require me to follow directions…) But I had fun coming up with the list, and adding the little icons for each — and couldn’t resist adding in the little bits of humor.