With the first month now officially over it seems like a good time to reflect on how things have gone and contemplate the possibilities for the future of the project. When I first took on the project it was due to me not having done much drawing over the last few years and this was something that I wanted to rectify. The reasons I had developed for not doing work were numerous ranging form having nothing to work towards, not enough space, not enough materials and mostly not enough time basically I would find any minor excuse to procrastinate further. The thing I always thought was my main problem was my generally disorganised nature meaning that any spare time I had was seemingly short, something that I now see was completely untrue. Furthermore I tend to be someone who avoids moving laterally through ideas in favour of a much more sporadic and chaotic approach, this normally means that I get an idea, a spark that fuels a creative outburst that ignites with a flourish but rapidly fizzles out of existence. My main hopes with this project as I've highlighted before was that I see it as an opportunity to provide some focus, something for me to drive towards, also as it's now in the public eye I have that element of pressure that was normally lacking. A further advantage I thought would have come from the project was as I involved drawing in my day to day routine it would allow me to become more structured and organised in my approach. In stead though I find I'm as disorganised as ever having just replaced the generic activities I would have done, those that would have left me with no time for drawing with the actual activity of drawing... which now leaves me no time to do those generic activities. In effect I've merely integrated drawing into the chaos that already existed rather than come close to resolving it, but the important thing is I'm at least doing something constructive.
I have also been thinking a lot more about the end resolution to the project, what form it may take and what the possibilities are, to me it seems that an exhibition is a logical outcome. However As with any project in it's early stages that is still to be defined it is not a good idea to get too bogged down in the outcome. The reason being is that this is the type of project that has the ability to grow and evolve, by having a clearly thought out end point this early it runs the risk of stagnating or becoming too restricted. In saying this though at this point they are just thoughts on where it could go rather than were it will be so it shouldn't be too much of an issue at this stage. The thoughts then so far are:
- Should it be 365 framed images,would this be cost effective? time consuming?
- Would it work better as 12 framed works, by month and possible arranged in the frame in a vaguely calenderised format?
- Could the concept and design sketches also be fully realised and integrated into the exhibition?
- Could the blog be turned into a book?
- Will the chosen venue impact upon the overall aesthetic of the exhibition and what the possibilities are?
These are all important things to consider as I look toward the future of the project, so I suppose this would be the most apt time to talk a little about where I go from here. First of all one place I will be going is Austria on holiday, that will actually be in only a few short weeks and although I will be in another country I still mean to carry out my challenge and should also be able to still post the drawings whilst I'm away. The main things I want to do over the next few months is attempt to bring more colour into the work, possibly even by using painting or watercolours, as well as this I hope to experiment a little more with techniques and processes to see in which direction I can take the drawing. The reason being is I have been thinking about what actually constitutes a drawing, so far much of what I have done has come from photos and rough sketches. In the case of the rough sketches these are then redrafted before being posted, is it a case that the rough draft should actually be classed as the drawing or is it always necessary to present something cleaner... would it possibly even be a good idea to include the rough drafts and sketches so that you can see how the thought process that has led to that work came about. This is worth considering over the coming months, should the drawings become more conceptual, experimental or should they remain analytical.