Artober, and the Power of Putting Your Focus In a Specific Place

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I decided this year to participate in the Instagram art festival #artober. Simply put, the idea behind these kinds of challenges is to practice your art on a regular basis – sometimes daily, as I\’m interpreting it, but not always. You could do #artober weekly or even, if you chose, monthly. Posters put pictures of their art on their Instagram feed and follow others who are doing the same.  That can be a lot of fun because you get inspiration for other pieces and meet a lot of really interesting artists in the process.

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There are prompts, but I don\’t always use them.  As you can see from this post, I chose to go a different direction. The prompt for this day was \”Ecstasy,\” which didn\’t really speak to me. I happened to listen to a broadcast by theologian and scholar Starhawk about power, and voila. My piece.

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I decided on Day 3 to play with faux calligraphy, which uses a regular fine-point pen to draw calligraphy, rather than relying on a nib for the characteristic thick-and-thin.

I do my pieces on the fly, and don\’t overthink them. That\’s one of the key pieces to a challenge like this that works for me: go fast, don\’t think, don\’t edit, just make.

I also use hashtags connected to my art, such as #calligraphy, #fauxcalligraphy, and of course, I tag each piece #artober and #artober2020.

What about you, Dear Reader? What are some of the things on which you\’re choosing to place your focus?