Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 1 - student project

Day 1 Journey- this prompt made me think of sharks and skates because many of them can't stop moving or they die so that's what I drew. I decided to write little haiku and tanka poems to go with the prompts as well I don't really know why I'm definitely no poet I think it just helped me to be more playful and not worry so much.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 2 - student project

Day 2 Cloud Watching in Your Sketchbook- before I went to bed I shut my eyes and scribbled on the page then in the morning I ended up drawing this dragon it was a lot of fun

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 3 - student project

Day 3 Feelin' Slow- This is actually probably more in line with how I normally draw. I find doing slow contour line drawings very helpful when I'm feeling anxious and panicky and have a special sketchbook dedicated to my "anxiety contours" where I don't have to worry about "messing up" when I'm shaky and nervous. I ended up drawing some flowers I picked from my garden and had in a vase that were starting to wilt, does anyone else find dried up wilted flowers a really interesting subject to draw?

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 4 - student project

Day 4 Shake it Up- this was a lot of fun and something I've been trying to do more of, I quickly sketched in the house then splashed ink around to from the "jungle" and then quickly added some "context lines" with my pen. It was really fun and I like the juxtaposition of really hard boxy man made things next to out of control flowy nature.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 5 - student project

Day 5 Metamorphosis- Made me think of eggs for some reason so I drew this house sparrow nest I have with blown eggs in it. Some birds built it in my parents carport then for some reason abandoned it shortly after apparently they just do this sometimes if the eggs aren't viable or they decided they don't like the location? Anyway it's a really lovely nest with a crazy assortment of branches on the outside that I rendered with a Pentel Pocket Brush pen then it's lined with really soft fur on the inside that I drew in with a fine Uni-Ball pen. The eggs are actually speckled and pale but I made them blue instead just for a pop of colour.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 6 - student project

Day 6 Metamorphosis 2- I decided to draw moth Cocoons, I'm not super happy with how this one turned out, not sure what else to say about it...

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 7 - student project

Day 7 Crowd of Creatures- This was so much fun I just started in the foreground and then layered animals. It was an interesting challenge to do one drawing everyday so you had to just get it done, usually I would have spent hours and hours and days and days agonizing over a drawing this complex and starting over again and again but instead I just kept going is it perfect no is there things I'd like to "fix" sure but did I get a complete drawing and have fun well doing it yes. Writing the bad poems is actually helping me to relax as well since I definitely don't see myself as a poet I don't have high expectations and I can just play it's helping me carry that attitude to my drawings in this little book.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 8 - student project

Day 8 Colours and More Colours- The colours of this day were pretty murky and hazy so I toned the blue down by muddying it up with a bit of orange. There was a lot of smoke from wildfires burning on a nearby mountain as well as in surrounding areas and I felt awful so this is what I came up with. I had some little circle stickers things nearby that I just felt like sticking to the page to mask of areas and afterward I just stuck them to the opposite page I used various coloured pencils and brush and chisel nib pens to add texture.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 9 - student project

Day 9 Flatten it Out- I decided to draw these very flat cactus cuttings I have on my window sill. I got them from a cactus someone had tossed out in a brush pile last fall and they didn't do anything all winter, I wasen't sure they were alive anymore but once the heat and light of summer got here they burst into life and started sending out all these leafy shoots. I drew the overlapping leaves as though they were see through I thought it might add to the "flattness" and added flat shapes and patterns in the background with ink and coloured pencil.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 10 - student project

Day 10 Thread- I had a couple days where I didn't feel very good and was having panic attacks and anxiety so I'm pretty foggy on what my thought process was here, I'm not to sure why thread made me think of strings of lanterns? Not one of my favorites I remember I struggled a lot with this one and I can see that my lines aren't confident and I was very shaky and scatter brained. I'm still glad I managed to draw that day though sometimes it's important to go through the motions on bad days no matter how much you don't want to.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 11 - student project

Day 11 Transform Me- I really didn't feel at all like revisiting thread so I decided to take another crack at drawing a cocoon for "Metamorphosis 2" There are some amazing moth and butterfly cocoons out there! This one was covered in leaves and sticks for camo. I'm not sure why I did the background the way I did but it was fun.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 12 - student project

Day 12 Structure- Structure made me thing seed structure or seedpods so that's what I did here. I clearly liked the background from the day before because I did something similar here. I just dropped ink onto wet paper and let it do it's own thing.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 13 - student project

Day 13 Take Two- I liked the texture from day 8 and I liked drawing the cactus on day 9 so I picked another houseplant to draw and used the same textures with the brush and chisel nibs on the owl.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 14 - student project Day 14 Texture- I found these magnolia seed pods when I was out walking and loved the snakey texture and the dots on the "caps" so that's what I drew here.

Marie's 14 Day Challenge to Unlock Your Creative Self - image 15 - student project

This is the little saddle stitch notebook I made for the challenge with canson XL mixed media paper. I wanted to make a small book just for this challenge so I wouldn't feel intimidated to start or stress to much if things didn't turn out because the point was to have fun and try new things that may or may not turn out. It was really satisfying to finish with a little collection of 14 drawings that I can flip through and see what did and didn't work. I think this is definitely something I'll do in the future when doing other challenges as I found it quite freeing.

Well that was a lot of fun thank you for this challenge Marie I felt like the prompts were a really great mix of just enough structure to have a place to start but open ended enough to not be feel constraining.

Laura Dahlman

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