I am very very inspired by the A-Painting-A-Day (PAD) movement that I came across recently on the Internet. The PAD movement was started in 2004 by artist Duane Keiser who has revolutionalized the way art creation is brought to the masses. Essentially, the idea was that artists, (both professional and hobbyists) can make it a discipline to create a painting every single day of their lives. The original story can be found in this USA Today article.Yep, every day.
It did seem like an impossible thing to do, but it is amazing to see how there are in fact hundreds and thousands of people out there who are actually doing it. Including people with full-time jobs and children, who is making it a point to create small sized paintings (usually no bigger than 6'X8' postcard sized works). It is very exciting to view their blogs and see how their work really did improve over time. More importantly, many of them attest to the fact that it has improved their "seeing" skills tremendously, because in looking for something to paint everyday, they have had to train their perception skills, and pick out interesting subjects in their everyday lives.
Check out these sites.
http://www.dailypaintersguild.com/
http://duanekeiser.blogspot.com/
There are literally hundreds more. It's exciting every morning to open the the guild pages to find out what new wonderful creations these daily painters have made the day before.
I have gone out to buy those mini blank canvases. Maybe one could start with the PAW (a Painting-a-Week) movement. :)
