This is the thing: During the process of working through the first month of the project, my brain underwent some shifts as a result of the project itself. One of those shifts involved the realization that I didn’t want to draw 365 consecutive cards. I want to draw some — and the process of doing so during the month of January honestly helped me figure out both some technical bits and some bits about my relationship with art in general — but I just don’t want to do it every day. What I do want to do every day, however, is something creative and/or educational.

To that end, I’m doing some tooling around with the concept of my little 3×5 Project. I want to try to split these things out into one-month projects, usually centered on a common form or theme. They won’t all be art-related, either; I think what I did with the project in January was good for my brain, and I want to expand that good-for-my-brain-ness into new directions. The first couple of ideas I’ve had — and I’m not yet sure which one I want to do for March — include:

• Using the 3×5 cards to develop a screenplay. Not to actually write the screenplay, mind you, as I sincerely doubt agents or studio readers would be inclined to read a screenplay hand-written on a batch of index cards. But I can develop character sketches, scene ideas, bits of dialogue, ideas, outlines… if I can do 31 days worth of index cards dedicated to one particular screenplay idea, I’d be a long way toward actually being able to put a draft together at the end of the process. One of my biggest problems with creative endeavors is a somewhat serious case of ADD (see: the fact that I started changing project parameters before January was even up), but I’m pretty sure I can put somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour per day into a project for one month. And even effort that little would put me in much better shape than I’ve ever been in regards to actually getting a screenplay written. (This same technique could obviously be applied to any other form of writing, I think, but for now, it’s just post-Oscars and I want to think about a screenplay.)
• Using the 3×5 cards to learn a foreign language. I clearly couldn’t get the same level of language learnin’ I could in other ways, but I think I could get a good functional foundation laid this way. Using the cards to conjugate verbs, to record vocabulary, to take notes on grammatical rules and concepts, to practice constructing sentences — I do believe I could either get a good start going on a language I don’t yet know but want to learn (French or German, f’r instance) or to enhance and expand my knowledge and understanding of a language I already feel fairly comfortable with (Spanish, most likely). I think this would be more effective with a language I already have some facility with as hearing the words wouldn’t be as necessary, but I think it could work to some degree regardless, especially if I can find a way to supplement the cards.
• Using the 3×5 cards to “storyboard” a comics story. These cards would be almost perfect for doing small-level sketches of pages for some sort of comic project, with notes about what I’m thinking on the other side.

I like this month-by-month project idea for several reasons, one of the biggest being that it’s working with my particular bland of short-attention-span flakiness rather than flying in the face of it. Knowing that at the beginning of the next month I can move on to a different project (even if it’s a variation on the same project) should help keep me focused. I also like that these projects could easily build on each other — I could work on, say, learning basic French one month, take a month or two on something else, and then come back for some intermediate-level French (with my stack of cards from the first time to use as refresher notes if necessary). Or I could do nothing but work on characters for a potential novel or comic series or screenplay, work on something else, then come back a month or two later and focus on plot. I like the fact that for creative works, choosing to work on a particular project for a month removes one of my biggest obstacles: the “what to write” hangup. I’ll know what I need to work on every day, at least in the macro sense.

Most of all I like the fact that it’s a way to move forward on something, to prod and poke my brain into working on the stuff I keep saying I want to work on but never do. If I can’t manage fifteen minutes or half an hour a day to work on one of these creative endeavors, to write some notes on an index card, I must not really want to work on it all that much, huh?

I’m open to suggestions, too, for other projects in the same vein. And as always, anyone who wants to appropriate this thing and try it for themselves, please do! I’d love to hear what some of you guys come up with, and I’d love even more to heard how it worked out for you after trying it.

Oh, wait, it’s just a cude ‘n’ cuddly bear. Never mind.

(Estimated time: about an hour. Under the cut you’ll find the initial five-minute sketch, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.)

If I were working on something more than one of these fairly-quickie project cards, I’d have put much more effort into the sketch, and I hope that would show in the final project. But since right now the point is just to get something done and gain some more comfort and familiarity with Illustrator — which is actually happening — then I didn’t want to put too much time into that first drawing. (Yes, he was going to have glasses. And a floppy hairdo. I decided against both. Well, decided against the hair and forgot about the glasses until I opened up the sketch again. D’oh.)

This one’s another all-digital piece — I did the original sketch in Illustrator, followed it up with the “inks” in Illustrator (and learned quite a bit about how I might pull that off), then switched to Photoshop for the colors, which I’m not sure I’m gonna do again. As much as I love me some Photoshop, I think Illustrator works much better for me for what I’m wanting to do. I might go back and do some more work on this one later on.

(Estimated time: 2 hours or so for everything. I’ll get faster as I better figure out my process. I hope.)

Starting tonight, I’m allowing myself all-digital “cards.” Tonight’s the first of those. Since this project is to allow me to learn new things and practice new techniques, and I believe digital artwork to be my medium of choice, then it doesn’t make sense not to allow myself to do digital pieces when I feel like it. So I’m not gonna not allow myself to work digitally.

I do intend going to keep to the spirit of the project: small areas of artwork, intended to be done somewhat quickly and allowing for trying out ideas or techniques. Tonight’s quickie “card” was drawn and colored in Photoshop; I wasn’t concerned with the what of what I was drawing (which is probably obvious from looking at it) as much as the how. I’m not all that happy with this how; I drew this at too small a resolution (72dpi), and I think I’ll be doing future digital drawings at a higher resolution, even if the end result will still be no bigger than 300px by 500px, the same dimensions all previous entires have been.

Anyway, yeah, the result here isn’t anything to write home about, but I wanted to put this one out there to introduce this new wrinkle to the project, and to get back to working on stuff after taking a few days off. More (and hopefully much better) tomorrow!

I’ve been holding out on you.

During the last two or three weeks, as I’ve been steadfastly sticking to my post-a-card-a-day schedule (current couple-of-day break excepted), I’ve been working on the side, too, without telling you about it. It’s not that I was ashamed of the other stuff I was doing; quite the opposite, actually. But it sort of went the opposite way from the entire concept of the card project: it was fewer pieces that each took longer to do.

See, I’ve rediscovered my love for doing computer-based artwork, which I’ve been doing some way or another as long as I’ve been using computers, which is most of my life. At this point, I truly believe digital art is “my medium” much more so than paper and pen/pencil, as much as I love using those tools. I didn’t want to bring this up yet because I didn’t want to seem like I was abandoning my project after only a couple of weeks — even though the project is directly responsible for re-igniting my passion for digital art. So I kept up the cards daily — and seriously think I might well continue to do so — because I was trying to embed into my brain that sticktoittiveness I’ve been lacking for so long.

I have a number of pieces up at my deviantART page. I’m still learning what I’m doing with Adobe Illustrator; I’ve been using it off-and-on for eight years or so, but am only now really getting into the guts of what it can do. I’m also practicing drawing in Photoshop — there will be more and more pieces I do which won’t have any paper component involved at all. Yes, a couple of these pieces so far were started from photos, but I plan to do more pieces that originate entirely from within my skull — right now, I’m still learning, and using photos as starting points helps me get right to the “these are the things I’m working on” point.

I was feeling a bit strange about doing this work I was actually kinda-semi-proud of and not sharing it with you while continuing to post quick works I wasn’t at all happy with. The more I work digitally, the more I’m starting to see where I can go with it in the future: I can see myself illustrating a children’s book, or putting together a comic book or webcomic, in a way I’ve never quite been able to see before. It’s pretty exciting, really. Here’s the piece I just finished this morning, to give you a taste of the kinds of things I’ve been trying to do:

(Click on through to deviantART for a bigger version.)

I’m still not where I want to be. I’m still learning. But I’m happier overall now with the kinds of things I’m able to put together, and more excited about what I’ll be able to do in the future, than I’ve ever been before.

More to come.

(Estimated time: 20 minutes.)

(Estimated time: 20 minutes.)