262 ArT Days

starts now! Happy New Year✨

Hello Good People,

Happy New Year 🎉Are you feeling rusty from all the festivities? Let me tell you that you are on the right place to start an art daily habit, yes right now!! No excuses, 262 ArT Days project starts today :)

You may be sleepy, exhausted or even a little hungover, but do yourself a favor: take 5 minutes today, grab a pencil or a pen - only one material is just fine (if you want to pick more than one, do it!) and take the first prompt of our project. I bet you will feel good afterwards. 

Are you ready? Let's do (a lot of) art together in 2024.

“An artist is an explorer.” - Henri Matisse

Daily prompts for January

You can download it here.

How it works

There are 5 themes:

- Food (includes drinks)

- Animal

- People

- Still Life

- Scenery (landscape, urban views, rooms)

Each week will have 1 prompt of each theme. Weekends off.

The ⭐️ on the calendar refers to surprise prompts, I will announce them the day before on the chat. But according with the colour in the calendar you already know which theme to expect. 

Note: let's imagine you don't want or don't like to draw people, you can draw from the other themes on "People days" because there's different reference pictures for all the prompts. And there's nothing wrong on practice the same subject more than 1 time.

You can use the prompts as you wish, draw from observation, imagination, use your own pictures, the reference board I will provide, you name it...you can even use the prompt as a starting point and sketch a completely different thing, that's perfect too!

The only "rule" here is to do something every day.

Pinterest Board (w/ reference pictures)

Need inspiration, there's a pinterest board to help. You can find the reference pictures through this link.

The pictures are separate by theme to become easier to scroll and find the prompt each day. You can only see the images references for January, that's on purpose to not ruin the surprise effect for the next month :)

Substack chat

There will be a chat here on Substack where I will announce the ⭐️ prompts, share some of my drawings and general art chat. The chat is a nice way to stay connected and strengthen accountability among us, you can also share your art on the chat - totally optional (no pressure).

If you share on Instagram use the #262artdays and tag me, so I won't miss it.

Tips to start:

-do your own thing (realistic, doodles, sketchy, abstract, digital, etc.) and pick your favourite materials to start.

-if you feel overwhelmed with the reference pictures, simplify it (use your artistic license!).

-had a very rough day and missed one day, join two prompts - many of the prompts work well together - p.e. duck and coat, why not drawing a duck wearing a coat :D; hot drink and hand(s), draw hands holding an hot drink.

-try to not skip many days in a row because it will make it harder to create/maintain the daily habit.

My plan of action 

I will start with a smaller sketchbook (A6) than my usual size (A5) because I like to draw small and think this will make me more comfortable to get started. The excitement is real and don't want pressure to ruin it after a few days.

My main focus this year is to draw every day, so I will try to use the project to focus on different things every week/month. It can be a material, technique, colour palette, etc. This month my intention is to focus on colour pencils. Doesn't mean I won't use other materials, I'm a mixed media artist so won't force me not to grab other material if I wish but the majority of the work will be done in colour pencils.

I will not share my sketches daily because it adds pressure and taking pictures is also time consuming 🙈 but will share them on the chat (maybe all sketches from the week on a scheduled day, still need to sort this out, bear with me!). May share some drawings on Instagram when feels right. 

During the month you will receive 3 more posts: 2 drawing time lapses from the prompts and 1 colour palette video.

I have a lot more fun features planned for this project that will come along in the following months and hopefully will make our "life" easier. This is meant to be fun. Art can (& must be) fun!

If you have any question and/or suggestion please share in the comments. 

Thank you for embarking on this artistic adventure with me,it will be amazing! 

“Let’s do what we love and do a lot of it.” - Marc Jacobs

See you soon!

Teresa