Rediscovering My Digital Artistry

I have played around with digital art for more than 15 years, mostly through the creation of digital scrapbook pages. Photoshop CC, once a scary steep learning curve, is now my friend.

But I found in recent years that I was not inspired to create. I was so busy with work or distracted by life I could not pull out any creativity. This needs to change.

For the month of December I decided to participate in an online digital art project run by one of my favorite designers, Anna Aspnes. She has run this annual event for 15 years. This year’s Project 19 is now on Day 12, but you can still join in, it is not too late. To jump start your project, Anna provides a lot of guidance and some incredible digital products.

I have been learning a lot from and enjoying her tutorials and videos – and I always learn from the art posted by others in the private FB group. Her valuable feedback on my pages is always appreciated.

While I have participated in previous years. each time I settled on a project or theme that focused on a collection I was trying to put together because “I should.” Well, this is NOT the way to play with the artist inside you. Each year I got bored and petered out a few days in.

This year I am approaching it in a new and different way. I let go of the “I should work on ….” mentality and decided to have my theme “Discovering the Artist Within.” And it is working, I am pleased to say!

For 25 days now, before bed, I peaked at the prompt for the next day (Anna mails the out each night) and slept on it. In the morning I give myself 1-3 hours – but a finite period of time – to create my page. If I did not do this I knew I would work on the page for HOURS – I am a perfectionist and have a hard to saying something is finished – but need to.

I put together the first idea I have that resonates with the theme. And I now have all 25 completed pages. I don’t know if I ever created 25 pages in one month. I took a short 3-day break for Christmas and finished pp 23-25 in one day.

You can view below my pages. If you are doing an art project tell us about it in the comments and link us to your art.

PS: Almost all of my photography is done with my iPhone. I used to use a digital SLR, but not anymore. So don’t think you need a fancy camera to be an artist. I’ll be going through iPhonography tips and editing ideas so subscribe to my email list and don’t miss out.

There is still time to join Anna’s Project 19 if you are interested.

Don’t starve your artist. Give it freedom to play and dedicate some time to feed the creative need within you. Write, draw, sing, paint or pull out your computer/tablet and create digital art like me.

All digital products were created by Anna Aspnes and are available for purchase at her OScraps online store. I am not receiving anything for this endorsement – I am only sharing it because I have used Anna’s products for years, find them of the highest quality, and easy to adapt and customize.