When I started my first Art Everyday project back in 2016, the beginning was difficult, mostly because half the struggle was coming up with something to draw! Even inspiration was hard to find. After a couple of months, an interesting thing happened. I started seeing ideas everywhere, and I began to have more ideas than time to produce them. I knew if I only kept these ideas in my brain, I might forget them. So I started keeping a notebook of things to draw later! When you develop a daily art-making habit, you are not only getting better at drawing, you become more adept at collecting inspiration and generating ideas.

In fact, when I started the Making Art Everyday project at the beginning of the year, writing this section that you are reading right now was a struggle. Every week I’d stare at my computer wondering what to write. Usually, I draw upon something that happened to me recently, but it was still hard. Still, I persisted every week, pushed through the difficulty, and forced myself to write. Something recently shifted and I starting experiencing things or hearing things that made me think of writing ideas all the time! I started a notebook with writing ideas that is now filled with options. When I’m not sure what to write about, I look to the notebook. That’s literally what I did this week. I had written an idea that said, “trapped ideas die.” That became what you just read!