• Miss last year's challenge? Check out the old submissions!

  • Get to know the ladies behind this whole operation!

  • Submit your prompt ideas today!

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Tomorrow's the big day!

How's everyone feeling? Excited? WE ARE.

(see? see how excited we are?)

Tynan and I will be posting the prompts every morning and then linking our work to them as we finish. Pleaseplease remember to link yours in the comments so we can see them as well! And, of course feel free to comment on each other's work (in a supportive manner. We have a no tolerance for assholes policy.)

We can't wait to see what this month brings!


Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A Little Clarification about 28 to Create


We’ve received a few emails and comments from people who are really excited about the challenge but worry they will not make the day to day posts because of all the time that goes into creating even one piece of work.

Now this is true. We know it. And we’d say (and are saying) “hey, even if you only participate one day, that’s something great!”

But the main point of this challenge is bringing you to the table (or the desk or the easel or the barre or the camera or the whatever) every day, feeling inspired or not. Because some days our muse doesn’t show up and we have to push through it anyway.

We’re not expecting something ready to hang at the Met or publish every day. We’re probably not gonna be able to provide a beautifully polished piece of work every week. And that’s okay. This isn’t about making your best work ever, it’s about MAKING at all. Creative people are the worst at getting down about their talent or time and then coming up with excuses to stop creating (we can say that because we’ve done it). This is taking away that excuse.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be NEAR perfect. We just want to see you walk up to your art every day this coming month and say “You might suck today. But I’m here anyway.”
Now if you create something this month and then decide to go back and perfect it, well that’s even better.

We also suggest watching this video before the challenge begins:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA

Sunday, January 27, 2013

4 days until go time!

Hey, everyone! We are getting super pumped (is that a thing? pumped? or should we have left that in the early nineties with our patterned shorts and childhood innocence?) about February 1st! 

We want to remind you to come here for your daily prompts OR sign up to follow those prompts by email! (The sign up is in that little sidebar to the right. It's the part that says, you know, "follow by email".) And if you're willing pleasepleaseplease come back here and link to your work on the daily prompts. We want to be able to see what everyone's creating!

In honor of all the creating that's gonna be happening, check out this TEDx video by Jake Nickell (a creator of Threadless) called "Never Stop Making".


Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Introductions: YOU

Now we want to meet you! If you're interested in the project or definitely gonna participate (a little or a lot) please add a comment to this post telling us a little bit about yourself!

We're especially interested in why you want to do this challenge, the artsy-writingy-performancey-creative mediums you might use and your favorite joke/snocone flavor/murder weapon.


Introductions: Tynan



Hello, everyone, I’m Tynan. Some of you may know me through real life (aka, not the internet), but for the sake of retaining some of my anonymity, I’m Tynan here.  This little post is going to be a small introduction for you.

I’m a young woman stuck in her life. Or at least, that’s how I feel. A love for art has always been in my blood; my grandmother was a fantastic illustrator & painter, all of my cousins have artistic bones in some fashion, my grandfather did photography for years. I grew up being encouraged to draw and color and embrace that side of myself.

So, naturally, I went to “art” school.

While I was there, I took a couple photography classes, and that’s when I really fell in love. Passionately. I started collecting cameras, experimenting with digital and film, trying to convey to other people the way my twisted little brain saw the world. It was an outlet, an escape, and I loved it.

Two years in, I left, for a variety of reasons. Turns out school isn’t one of my strong suits. From that point, my art started disappearing. I could barely bring myself to touch my camera, much less use it. It dwindled down and down and down, til I went months without even pulling my camera out of the case.

It’s hard, losing a passion like that, letting a flame go out like that.

A couple nights ago, Brittany and I were having a conversation over Skype (this girl is my art!soulmate, guys, she’s brilliant), and I was telling her about how I was having a hard time just existing recently. She said I had to have a reason to get out of bed each morning that was a happy reason, not to get up and go to my dead-end job. She suggested something like the 30 day poetry challenge she had completed recently, but tailored more towards something I felt strongest with. The conversation evolved, and voila, here we are, with 28 to Create.

I’m hoping that following through with this challenge will help reignite that spark of creativity inside of me, to help find that passion again.  To give me a reason to get out of bed each morning (cause some days, that’s really hard to do). I’m hoping that everyone who participates in this has a reason too, a reason they want to complete this, to inspire their art or to challenge themselves.

Most of my work will be dealing with photography, but I may or may not slip a little design into it. Sometimes I like to think I have an eye for typography, but more often than not, I don’t. So, we’ll see, I suppose. I’ll most likely be posting my images to my tumblr account, but if you guys track the tag “28 to Create”, you’ll see things pop up.

I’m excited to see the creativity of other people popping up. The imagination that people have is absolutely amazing to me, and I can’t wait to see what people come up with for the challenges.

A+ if you read through all of that, and let the challenge begin!

Introductions: Brittany

Hey, all you artisty types! Tynan and I decided we should officially introduce ourselves before this thing takes off so here goes.

My name's Brittany. Pretty simple. The "s" key on my computer is broken so I just CTRL+C and CTRL+V when I need a little "s". I like peanut butter. I wish someone would pay me to play kazoo and make sassy faces at people who say dumb things.

I'm a theatre person and while I was working with Sundown Collaborative Theatre I discovered my deep-seated obsession with incorporating other art forms into performance. The awesome artists I worked with fed my love of visual art, music and writing as well and now I'm stuck in Artland (that's a stupid name, anyone have a better name?)

I'm hoping this challenge will free me up creatively. I've been editing and revising a lot of my writing recently which means I'm more focused on marking through my work than making more of it. I want to be open to just making more art this challenge. Even if it's terrible. Just letting it out and moving on, instead of cutting my creativity off at the roots (which I tend to do in "revision mode").

I especially hope this challenge creates a small community of artists who share their work and support each other through the month.

I'll be working in...well, mainly everything. I might write some blogs or poems. I REALLY wanna try some photography and I'm going to pull my paints out so we'll just see where it goes!

And I'll be posting at my Tumblr. You'll get a link every day to my piece-of-the-day, of course. But they'll all be on there.

I'm so excited and thanks for joining us!

Monday, January 21, 2013

coming soon

Please check out the "What is 28 to Create?" page for more info on this project!