Looking closer, going deeper

Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog will have noticed that I haven't been participating in any of the weekly art challenges lately, not Illustration Friday nor Inspire Me Thursday. Nor have I been doing my usual ink and marker pen drawings. This is because I felt I was getting stuck in a rut. The weekly challenges are great for stimulating you, giving you ideas when you feel you need them, and a great way of being inspired by other people's work too. But, for me personally, working on one or two new challenges each week meant that I was working very quickly, too quickly, and like I was always trying to catch up with myself. Plus, I have to admit that I often got sidetracked from the creativity by comment greediness, trying to solicit as many comments as I could drum up. Comments are wonderful of course, and it's been interesting and great to see who's been coming back to my blog anyway, despite not having been active in the challenges, but ultimately, the quest for comments have been distracting me a little too much and have been making me wonder what's been more important to me - blogging popularity, or creating art?

Anyway, I knew I needed to take a break from the challenges in order to go deeper, and not worry so much about the limelight. So here's what I'm doing now. I'm finishing my drawing in colour course work. And then, I will choose a topic each month, and create art around that theme for the whole month, things I've been meaning to look into or explore or do for ages, but just didn't.

In July, I'm going to be exploring portraits. I hope you keep checking back to see what I'm up to, and yes, it would be great to get comments, so I can learn and grow and find out how other people are responding to what I'm doing (and not just to boost my ego!).

Thanks for looking.