61 Abstractions on Index Cards

The daily challenge of painting an abstract piece of art on an index card during June and July is over – and it’s time to celebrate this achievement! I’m late with my personal celebration, but there have been a lot of it going on around the internet these last few days. Nobody knows how many thousands of people participated in the challenge through the years since it started – or how many of those also got to 61 that marks the finishing line… Just starting is awesome, giving this fun creative challenge a try is great, to fill an index card each day, yes indeed. But seeing the final result is a simply awesome! It’s a good feeling to finish what you set out to do, even if it’s just “painting a few lined cards during the summer”…

I finished the challenge and posted my last index card the 31st of July to both instagram and my facebook fan page Studio iHanna. And today finally, all of them together in this post…

And as a reminder to those super impressed right now, I did not create my cards daily, because I’m not interested in that – instead I set up to create a few index cards a week and shared them (almost) daily on social media, which has been half the fun of this. Then after taking a photo and sharing it to instagram under the hashtag #iHannaICAD I tacked it up to my white wall, in rows of 7 index card. I’ve been doing this all summer and I’m gonna keep ’em up there for a while, because I love this sight so much.

Abstractions process

So let’s see, the process has been in a few very enjoyable steps:

1) painting freely on an index card
2) snapping a photo with the iPhone, trying to “style” each one a bit (I even picked a few flowers in June that I used as props!)
3) putting it up on the wall and seeing the collection grew and then,
4) sharing the photo on instagram, writing a few words, thoughts or just numbering the index card
5) getting hearts, love and comments from friends and followers who enjoy these little abstract paintings too!

The process of creating these was very different from the last time I participated in index-card-a-day back in 2011 (all ICAD 2011 posts here). Back then I didn’t have instagram and no facebook following even though they both existed. I shared most of my process on the blog, and my aim was to experiment with something new each day. This time I tried to stick with abstract painting for each card, using mostly acrylic paint but also some crayons and pens (because it got a bit boring to just paint). I guess it means I’m a mixed media artist at heart, I need to mix things up most of the time.

I still think there is a lot to like about index cards, and I’m grateful to Mrs Daisy Yellow for introducing them to me so many years ago. Though there were times during the past two months that I wanted to quit, because I didn’t know what I wanted with them. Now I’m glad I didn’t give up. I’m glad because I love creating art, be it on index cards or other types of canvases.

I’m sticking with creating art so please stick around! :-) But for the next couple of months, not on index cards. But who knows, maybe I’ll give it try again next summer? What do you think? And what about you: Did you join, did you create a series of art or something else this summer? I’d love to see, or know about it. Please share in the comments.