Part of the 14-Day Art for Self Care Challenge on the Skillshare Discord

Day 01 - Enough

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 1 - student project

I was going to go with drawing on the iPad in Procreate, but I wanted to try to use gouache for this one and really stick with it for all 14 days, because I always get end up drawing on the iPad. I also know nothing about gouache so I'm hoping to just play around with some cheap paints from Amazon and get a feel for how to use the medium.

We use a meal delivery service and get more than a dozen meals a week, and each meal comes in a cardboard sleeve and I've been saving all of these sleeves because they are just plain white cardboard and they felt like the perfect thing for testing paints, using as collage bits, scratch paper, etc. And I like that they're all cut to the same size/shape so I'll end up with a set of drawings that all look uniform. I eat at least one meal a day, so I'm hoping maybe this could turn into a daily "eat, draw, listen" practice.

I really struggle with "hearing" my intuition so I just started making some marks on the cardboard and eventually came up with the word "enough." I love fall but was feeling a little antsy, like where did summer go, this year just blew right by so fast. I feel this pressure and urgency to "do something" or to "get back to work" every time a new month or season rolls by, especially towards the end of the year. I feel like I'm not doing enough, being productive enough, working hard enough. I want to make this creative life sustainable, but I'm not doing enough to make it happen. And then I heard "enough" in a different way: "I'm enough as I am now," "my efforts are enough," "my trying the best I can is enough." And also "enough" in sense of "enough with the negative self-talk, that is the least productive thing to be doing." So "enough" is a combination of all these things.

Day 02 - OOF

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 2 - student project

I ended up making two separate pieces today on the same cardboard sleeve. I watered my plants and then got hit with a stomach bug as I was doing it, so the first half is me watering plants, and bottom "oof" is me dealing with the stomach bug. My stomach was feeling so bad and I felt so out of it when I started trying to draw. It felt like I couldn't really hear or discern anything except for feeling tired and drained, but I'm glad I got the watering done today before the stomach bug took me out. I didn't intend for it, but looking at the "oof" now, it sorta looks like the grill of a big red truck. Channeling some Ed Ruscha, whose art I did not know about until I saw an ad for his big yellow/blue "OOF" on the subway.

Day 03

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 3 - student project

I was feeling better when I woke up. Ate only bananas and crackers and went out for a walk. The weather was really nice, hot but not too hot, and there was a nice breeze when I went down to the water. The sky was super clear and I wanted to capture that crisp blue sky in some way and I was very surprised to find a butterfly cutting through all the traffic so I incorporated some butterflies.

I wasn't really sure what I was hearing today, but I think it was something along the lines of giving myself permission to listen to what I want and to hear that what I want is possible, that having a creative life (or any life) has to look a certain way or mean a certain thing. I couldn't put a word on it that I wanted to include. Maybe freedom or flying away, but also maybe just being content with what is and striving for what may come to be.

From a process perspective, I have this issue with watercolor as well, I am not patient enough to let the layers dry. Learned the hard way with some of the butterflies that gouache acts like both watercolor and acrylic. Sometimes it is super opaque and layers on matte, and sometimes its wet and picks up wet paint underneath.

Day 04 - Pleased

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 4 - student project

Still not 100% back to normal from the stomach bug but mostly there. We're going away for the weekend so I'm in a rush to get back to normal and not jeopardize the trip. Setting aside the physical stuff this week, I've actually been in a pretty good mood. I've made some (small) steps towards getting making my art business more of a reality and less of a day dream. I signed up for a course on art licensing so I'm also excited to dig into that next week and learn what I need to learn instead of just being overwhelmed by all of the things I don't know.

I have a really hard time giving myself credit. I'm always downplaying things I do, or beating myself up that I didn't accomplish more, or thinking, "oh, that's such a small thing, look at all of these other people who have accomplished so much more." I'm trying really hard to give myself credit for the things I'm doing. So my message for today was being pleased with myself.

I was doing Jen Dixon's watercolor bootcamp before this challenge started, and I wanted to try doing some of the exercises with gouache and boy was it difficult to get the consistency and thickness right on the yellow "bricks." But I think the letters turned out better, because the blue was a little more opaque and covered up my mistakes. But I totally ran out of room for "pleased" so I had to just go with it.

Day 05 - I am worthy of my dreams.

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 5 - student project

I did this last Friday but didn't have time to reflect and post it until today because I was traveling for a short trip over the weekend. I did today's piece after some yoga and meditation. While I was meditating, I saw a lotus flower towards the end, but when I sat down to paint, it didn't really manifest. I think I had too much of a plan for today's piece. I wanted to clean an old palette with a bunch of dried up gouache so I can make room for new colors, so I was set on using up my old paints. I ended up making succulent colors? I really like some of the shades of greens that I got and I wish I paid more attention to which colors I mixed (brown, yellow, white, blue, green) and for the pink/salmon (white, orange/brown, some shade of red)? I am having a much easier time mixing colors and getting cool shades of colors with gouache than with watercolor. It might just be because I bought larger quantities of cheaper gouache so I'm willing to really use them and mix. For the message, I wrote my morning affirmation "I'm worthy of my dreams." This week it feels more believable and real. Some other weeks it feels like I'm just saying the words to say the words.

Day 06 - Be Seen

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 6 - student project

I usually just start drawing and see where things go for this challenge, so it was different to spend time today thinking about what message could be. I came across a number of things that resonated with me, but settled on "Be Seen" after I start painting and filing up the cardboard. I also didn't have a plan for what I wanted to paint today and just started trying to use up some left over gouache in the palette again. It ended up being like...the bottom of a castle or tower? Something weirdly fairy tale like. Ran out of space for the letters again, and I put the letters down first and had to go back and fill in the tower/bricks behind it. It looks like a beaver chewed through the part of the tower behind the letters.

Day 07 & Day 08

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 7 - student project

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 8 - student project

I did these two days one after the other. I was a little worried that I wasn't going to give myself enough time to hear my intuition (but I also wanted to catch up). I think the prompts for these two days went well together: giving myself permission and saying "it's okay..." felt complimentary. The message for both came readily: I want to give myself permission to dream and I want to tell myself that it is okay to rest. I think I've in a "dream and rest" state for a while, working on reclaiming my creativity and working towards making my dream of an art career into a reality. I'm always fighting that voice in my head that tells me I'm falling behind, running out of time, not doing enough, that's always asking for more, more more. I'm tuning into the voice that says I can take as much time as need, that it is okay to rest and take things slow, one step at a time, progress not perfection.

I have been getting a little tired of just using gouache every day, so I tried to mix it up by using ink and a little collage for the word "rest." I like how dark the ink looks against the gouache background. I might try that more, especially to ink in some letters or phrases. I'm really happy that I didn't mess up writing "dream." I used the bends on the cardboard as a guide for the letter height.

and a little collage for the word "rest." I like how dark the ink looks against the gouache background. I might try that more, especially to ink in some letters or phrases. I'm really happy that I didn't mess up writing "dream." I used the bends on the cardboard as a guide for the letter height.

Day 9 & Day 10

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 9 - student project

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 10 - student project

Another day where I felt like the prompts for the two days worked well with each other.

For day 9, I settled on something generic because I had a hard time coming with something a good friend would say to me that I wanted to translate to a drawing. I am very good at negative self talk and putting myself down but I'm getting better at being a good friend to myself and having self-compassion. A lot of what I was feeling was someone cheering me on from the sidelines so I stuck with "You got this". I spent more time focusing on the painting. I wanted to try to play with getting really opaque white lines, and I like the consistency of the white that I got. It felt like I was drawing with white out. Waiting a little for the background to dry helped get a more matte look.

For day 10, I've recently been working through not bottling up my feelings, or shying away from feelings I don't want to experience fully. I'm always trying to dissect my feelings, like "why do I feel angry," "why am I anxious in this moment" and so on, I think as a way to avoid them or to put them away. So my reframed affirmation was that I want to feel my feelings. Aaaand I ran out of room for the S again. It looks like a flourish for the L...

Day 11 - Steady

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 11 - student project

I wasn't sure if I could hear a different tone of voice for my message, and I didn't want to overcomplicate it. I got some new sketchbooks and watercolor pads because they were on sale. I was really eager to start working through Mel Armstrong's Floral Patterns in Gouache class, because it comes with a 30 days of sketchbook floral prompts so I spent most of the day painting flowers and small patterns using gouache.

As I was getting tired and wondering if I should make more art to capitalize on the momentum, I randomly heard "steady as she goes" in my head, like the song from The Raconteurs. That took me by surprise. I really like binging on my interests until I'm sick and tired of them. I have a hard time pacing myself if I'm really interested in something. I can never put a good book down or save an episode for later or log off and not play just one more game. So the message felt very different for me, like my intuition was telling me that I can put down painting for the day, there will be 30 more days of prompts, as many days of art as I'd like there to be and I don't have to do it all now.

I didn't intend on drawing a map but after I started adding the little embellishments and I looked at it, it felt like it need a winding road. Like my intuition was telling me there is still a long road ahead. Be steady. Take it one day at a time.

Day 14

14 Days of Self Care Art - image 12 - student project

A lot of words came to mind for today's prompt so, knowing how it is with me and my freehand letters, I wrote out the words in pencil before I put down gouache. I made a really nice salmon pink color but it ended up looking more orange and with the black ink, it looks like a Halloween theme, which I guess is okay because we're heading into October. I liked today's prompt. I thought it was a nice way to round out the class and the challenge, and it also felt like I was really tuning into today. I heard these words pretty clearly and just went with it.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started this class and while it doesn't feel like anything drastic happened, I do feel like I can tune in more to my inner voice. And, on the process side, I am really glad I stuck with gouache on these cardboard sleeves for all fourteen days! It made me think outside the box on some days, and I found out it can be really fun just to paint backgrounds.

Z. L.

aspiring writer, artist & illustrator

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