New year, new word

I've been taking a little blog holiday and have been enjoying a two and a half week's holiday of day trips, long walks and lazy days. No blogging, no painting, no drawing. Just relaxing, and enjoying the time and company (and struggling with a nasty cold). Oh and taking tons of photos. A few with my rather neglected camera, and loads and loads with my iPhone.

The holiday is over, the new year has started, and with it come new plans, dreams, wishes, resolutions - and a new word. This is the third year that I've chosen a word to accompany me throughout the course of the year. My first year's word was Inspiration. I wanted creativity, painting, drawing, photography back on a regular basis in my life, and I was looking for inspiration all around me to get me back on track. It worked. Last year, I chose the word Journey. I wanted to continue on the path I had begun following the year before. At the end of the year, I wanted to find myself in a distincly different place from where I started 12 month earlier. I invited changes, big and small. It worked.

After those two quite successful years with my words, I felt it was time for a bit more action, as they both were somehow rather passive. So my word for 2013 is Do. This year, I want to get things done. No more procrastination, no more waiting for things to happen. Do it.

There are so many things I want to change this year, so many plans and dreams, some of them more realistic, others maybe more wild and adventurous. But we'll see. I'll definitely give it a try, and DO what I can to make things happen.

As for the blog, there are a few things I want to change this year, some of them long overdue.Well, two main things, really:

1. blog more often
2. give my blog the makeover I've been wanting to give it for the past one and a half years

Have you chosen a word for 2013? What is it?

Art Every Day Month: Days 18 & 19

One of the many things I want to practise drawing and sketching are humans. So I tried to do some small portraits last night for day 18 of Art Every Day Month. The one on the left right was the first one I did, drawn from memory of a sketch I did a few weeks ago. For the others, I used the theatre programme of a play I saw in London last months. While I at least  manage to get them to look like humas, I'm still far away from achieving a real life-like likenenss, so the actors are not really recognisable at all. Of course I used my newly discovered, and already much beloved Sanguine pencil again.

Today, day 19, I finally got out my calligraphy things again. It's something I've neglected far too long. Two, three years ago, I could rarely spend an evening without getting my nibs, pens and inks out. But with all the other things happening since then, they somehow got a bit neglected, though not completely forgotten. It wasn't only me that had become rusty, my poor nibs seem to have suffered too. I definitely have to get them out more often again!

I'm afraid my proportions are, as usual, all wrong. It's because I'm always too lazy to prepare and rule my paper correctly. I just want to write. Also, I never manage to write something without making mistakes. I'm concentrating so much on the shape of the letters when I'm writing, that I completely forget the words, and so sooner or later, make a mistake.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously (Noam Chomsky)