May Day
May we?
Mais Oui!
So, I struggle with consistency a lot. Waking up everyday is pretty much the only thing I do consistently.
So it was the early morning of May 1, and I thought to myself, “What if I made a prompt list to help me create something every day of this month?”
And so I did. I decided that for everyday of the month, I would either paint or write something in relation to the prompt. I basically just compiled all the m-related words that could vaguely be used as a prompt, and then I assigned them to days.
This write-up is just to talk about some of the ones that gave me trouble, or had a story behind them.
Day 5- Magic.
I had no idea where this painting was going. I was going to have a girl hold a book in a forest.
My sister saw me working on it and was like “where’s the magic?”
And I was like, “Aren’t books the greatest magic of all?”
The look on her face told me she did not agree.
So I made her an elemental; a firebender. Azula who? I’m so happy with how it turned out. And I left her with a book even if it just makes this whole painting a fire hazard.
Day 6- misery.
I struggled to come up with an idea for this prompt before turning to my Pinterest boards. That’s when I saw Ophelia. Now I had loved this painting even before I started learning to paint. It had even featured in one of my favorite talking horse shows of all time- BoJack Horseman.
The tragedy of Ophelia, is basically just Shakespeare fanart.
In case you have not read Hamlet, it’s basically Lion King. Except Simba got with Scar’s daughter as he plotted to kill Scar. Scar’s daughter then proceeded to kill herself by drowning in a lake. Beautiful, I know. John Everett Millais painted Ophelia. I think those 17–19th century artists were some of the biggest artsy fangirls. And Shakespeare was a popular bias.
Also, my sister couldn’t tell immediately that she was drowning from my painting. Does it also look like she’s under a log to you?
Day 11-mind
I just really like this. This month made me realize that purple and yellow might just be my favorite complementary color combo. Also, I really like drawing cats. Those are my two major takeaways from this whole month, to be honest.
Day 16- mocking bird.
I hated this prompt but I couldn’t complain because I wrote the dumb prompts by myself. When I tried drawing fur on this cat, it was a disaster. It was giving uncanny valley. It was giving disasterpiece. It was giving… terrible fanart of the cats in Barbie Princess and the pauper.
I went for a simpler version and realized I had to learn to paint fur. But it was almost midnight so I had to save that for another day.
I still like the idea behind this though. It was supposed to be Katniss Everdeen from Hunger games, cause you know she’s the mocking jay, but also like KATniss. And then the bird is in the pose that it is for the movie. And she’s trying to kill a mocking bird. Because like… Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mocking Bird.”
And now that I’ve written it out, it just sounds ludicrous. But you know, even though, even though.
Day 24- Mood.
I like this one because it’s a good representation of this whole month. Also, it’s from a sketch I made of my friend, Olamide, while she was using my digital tablet when I just got it. So… it’s a good memento too.
What did I learn from all this?
I learnt that while consistency is important, you have to make actual steps to improve. Otherwise you might end up consistently average. So, yeah, I did not improve by much this month. But I did learn some things about what I liked doing. Either way, I’m still glad I finished this challenge because it made me feel happy, and helped me distract myself from ASUU palaver for a few hours every day.
Vote of thanks. (Appreciation, Modupe.)
I’d like to really thank all the bots that commented, asking me to DM stuff to so and so page. I really loved seeing notifications and finding out they were not from real people.
But jokes aside, thank you all for liking, sharing retweeting my stuff on my two IG accounts https://t.co/lS3SucO6er and https://t.co/gJsYmoka1b and on my twitter account https://twitter.com/Ravanjie .
Thank you to those that joined the daily challenges. Anjola, Bolutife, Winifred, Fiyin, Demilade and Malik, thank you; you’re so amazing. Special thanks to Sekinat, a consistent queen. She wrote a beautiful poem for almost every prompt. Thank you if you even briefly thought of joining. Thank you for going to my IG and Twitter pages after reading this and liking everything. Don’t forget make and/or enjoy art.
To quote Jomny Sun, “It is beautiful, it is ur art. It is very art.” Peace.✌️
Note
Speaking of consistency, I uploaded my annual YouTube video. It’s a time-lapse of me painting a poster while jamming to Lagbaja’s “Nothing for You”, and Fela’s “Gentleman” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syE-rbULtSQ
