“Day One: The first step is the hardest so start small today and makes something that fits in the palm of your hand, using only the materials in your immediate environment.”
Richmond artist Noah Scalin did just that.
Based on the experience of his yearlong Skull-a-Day project, he created a book of prompts for other artists to follow. Though it probably took him more than one day.
Now with adherents across the world, he’s releasing an expanded version of the book and inviting Richmond to partake in a month-long creative sprint starting April 1.
Participants will get daily prompt emails in April and share their creations in online communities with #makesomething365.
“When I did Skull-a-Day in 2007 and 2008, it was the height of blogging,” Scalin says. “My project was Web-based, but Facebook wasn’t what it was, Instagram didn’t exist, Tumblr was in its infancy. Now there are built-in networks.”
But if online sharing offers a community for the artists, the core creative process relies on an old-fashioned journal, with a year of prompts, and space for writing and sketching. Scalin has expanded it by a month, and added interviews of people who have participated.
“People set their [artistic] goals really high, but just doing something every day gets you somewhere,” he says. “We wanted to lower the barrier.”
Noah Scalin will be at Chop Suey Books on March 31 for the CreativeSprint RVA kickoff and the “365 New and Expanded Edition: a Daily Creativity Journal” book launch.