I wish for you to pursue these 15 days with the eyes of a child and the eagerness of when you first began creating. I want you to light up at the idea of creating, not dread it or even fear it. Let your craft grow while guiding it with a gentle hand. Let yourself exist in a space of extreme creativity for 15 days.

~Brooke Shaden

August is a busy month for me personally with my son starting back to school next week, but when Brooke Shaden posted about starting a 15 day creative challenge on her blog and Facebook page, I knew I needed to participate.  I have had my own little challenge of creating a new piece each week, but this brings it to a new level with a new piece each day.  Brooke is one of the most inspirational artists and writers that I have found on my artistic journey.   She is always accepting of others and open with her own feelings.  She is a very genuine person and I like to think I have that in common with her.  

Her art is very self portrait based and organic in its composition where she comes up with her ideas, shoots on location, in costume and then edits her ideas in Photoshop later.  I don't have as much freedom to get up at 4am and go shoot at the break of dawn each day or at sunset when I'm usually putting my kids to bed, so I rely more on stock photography available by other artists to create my work. I'm also more self conscious about myself, so self portraits aren't usually what I do.  

I'm going to try to break that a bit.  I don't have a lot of costumes to use or even simple dresses, but I hope to do more self portraits.  My work doesn't extend too much into the surreal as hers does, but I hope to break with that a bit, too.  So, for the next 15 days I will push myself to create a new fine art piece each day to broaden myself creatively and technically. It won't be easy, but nothing worth doing is, usually. 

The first theme (I don't have to stick to them, but I think it does help to give me a creative diving board) is "Rebirth".  I used a model from Faestock and other stock images from Pixabay and other free sources to create this piece.  For me, it is like dusting off the creative cobwebs and emerging as a new artist.  I hope I do this challenge justice with my work!

RebirthSomeday I'll be free from the prison of my mind, immune to the criticism of others. I long for this day.