In December, I took a break from all things botanical and spent some of my spare time participating in #abstractadvent, an annual art challenge developed and hosted by art pedagogy. This was my third year participating and I found it more difficult than previous years. I began to create visual narratives each day and my format was larger than previous (each day was approximately 11.5 cm/4.5″ square). I also developed my theme using characters I cut out of a shipping bag from the art pedagogy shop. I paired all of this with watercolour details illustrating each day’s chosen shape. Finally, Letraset was used to loosely refer to the story line which was often informed by daily events or the characters themselves. For someone who is comfortable with drawing, all this different media was tricky to put together in a cohesive way!
Near the end, it became a daily work-in-progress effort, with catching up on weekends. I did succeed in finishing and I’m pleased with these tiny collages – considering work was hectic, celebrations were being prepared and I was coming up with ideas fairly quickly.
In order to fully participate in this and have my work seen by others on Instagram, I needed to use a hashtag – something I had given up with my personal account.
So, I scrambled to develop a new public account. You can find my daily challenge work here: @an_uncertain_satellite (story about the name for another time or not at all). I am also participating in #100daysofspindlespinning developed by @dreareneeknits and I’ve found this return to small amounts of fibre spinning each day very rewarding. In the new year, I hope to share some of my progress with this.
Best wishes, whoever is reading, for a peaceful, hopeful and creative New Year.
Images above: Mixed media collage. B. Wanhill, December 1-24, 2023.
quietly creating 