let the days pass
show up and do the work
yancey towne’s art making is a weekly newsletter about the daily practice of making art. I hope to encourage people to take the time to explore, learn, and play…
I hit a milestone this week in my fresco practice, 365 days of practicing, phew!
When I began I wasn’t sure I would even be able to make it to 100, but then I found a comfort in showing up to the work each day. It was a space to be free and make marks without my mind directing the show. My hand could wander and I let the marks be. Erasing was pretty much off limits because I knew I would get stuck trying to make things ‘right’ and I wanted to focus on freeing the flow of my hand across the pages.
The gift of a daily practice is that you create a vast library of material to reference and be inspired by. It’s fun to look back at all the days to see how your practice has shifted and to let new ideas pop up from all the past work.
And how funny that the practice piece that marked the half-way point was about doing the work and letting it happen? I’ve learned to show up, do the work, and not let my mind take over directing and micro-managing. There’s plenty to learn and when I show up consistently, I trust that those lessons will appear. And one way or another, I will learn what I need to grow.
Working digitally allows me to practice quickly and since I can keep things on separate layers I have a lot of flexibility to mix and match elements from all my pieces. It would be fun to experiment with the lines from my last pattern doodle and the marks from my first day to see what would happen. Playful experimenting opens the imagination.
Now it’s time for a little pause to enjoy the end of one project, to be grateful for the lessons and the stretching. Later there will be time to consider what’s next…💛
current projects
knits: two sleeves, two yarn balls—almost the same size. I’m probably about halfway there with the length, then I work on adding them to the sweater body that is currently on pause.
walks: This morning I’ve been able to take a few walks with the pups before work and the greens have been fabulous. There are even a few handful of small delicate looking pink roses flopping around in the damp fall wind. The light begins its return in a few days so there will be even more color to enjoy.
patterns: The last quarter of my 100+ day project was focused on patterns. Slowly, I am returning to my days of sketches and working on them in Illustrator to discover the patterns hiding in them.
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