The Winter Project

Do any of you experience seasonal productivity?

I've started to notice that different seasons of the year bring their unique traditions, flavors, and demands on my time. Duh, right? In the spring and summer much time is spent in the garden: planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. The spring's return of light is so exciting that I need to get outside and sketch. In the summer I get so distracted with all the fun random projects (this summer was screen printing). In Western Washington, the fall brings a constant drizzle from the sky and then the daylight just evaporates. It is just so so so so dark in December and there are holiday festivities that distract me. In October 2020 I started to draw bunnies... and I didn't stop until the weather got better and the sun came back. I drew a lot of bunnies. Check out the post about it here. Also, 2020 holidays had a refreshing lack of activities which left me room to get my creative repetition on.

I am hoping that Winter 2021-2022 will be equally awesome.

The bunnies happened by accident. My sister, Chelsea, turned me on to the idea of projects. She recently re-picked up photography (and a new camera) and this video gave her some great ideas. So now I am in the process of being proactive in choosing a winter project. I'd like to pick something:

• attainable
• fun
• that develops skills

Here's some projects I've thought about:

• Golden Arches: I sketch a ton of McDonalds either on location or from pictures
• Walking Distance: A collection of sketches within a 30 minute walk of my house
• Too Soon?: Sketch real and/or fictitious headstones, but change the epitaphs so that they are funny
• Children's Picture Book: Lots of options here...and I am not sure how far I'd get in a winter

What do you do in the winter to keep yourself sane? Leave a comment.