Alice Jones

Alice Jones
Christchurch     
100 Days of Cats
 
Quilts, art, and the people who enjoy those practices have been a large part of my life. I will complete a Master of Visual Arts through Otago Polytechnic in February 2021, with a focus on textiles. The 100 day challenge appealed to me as a way to consistently work to improve my art, and being accountable to the group provided motivation. It was also a nice way to meet other like-minded people, even if it was only virtually. 

My original intention was to create collages based on several poems that I liked. I wanted to improve my compositional skills and thought that the poems would provide a focal point. The first poem that I chose was “The Naming of Cats” by T. S. Elliot. It wasn’t long before both the idea of collages and using other poems fell by the wayside. Throughout the rest of the 100 days I focused on cats, apart from one day’s focus on the Queen and her corgis. I moved between drawing cats and printing cats on my gelli plate.

Day 15

I have enjoyed looking at other people’s journals and art books online and I wanted to achieve a similar look for my 100 days project. I chose to use an A5 sketchbook to hold all my work. I felt it was a good idea to put some constraints on my work to help me make decisions on the size of each work and the materials I would use. Over the 100 days my drawing skills improved. I used either photos of my cats or images in a cat book as my subjects. My printing skills improved as well because I became more familiar with different types of paint and was able to create transparent layers. 

Day 44

Although the sketchbook gave me a format to follow, I found that I preferred drawing on separate sheets of paper, rather than in a book. I ended up gluing both the prints and many of the drawings into the book. 

Day 82

Being accountable to the group kept me consistently working on the challenge every day. Posting my work daily on the group Facebook page also meant I stayed on task. I found spare time to work on the project and it was very pleasant to either draw or print each day. In the future I probably would not use a sketchbook for my work, but I would decide on a consistent size to keep the work cohesive. Also, having a size between A5 and A4 keeps the work achievable. 

Having a daily challenge kept me focused and motivated to keep moving forward, something I struggle with if I am not accountable to anyone. I would do the challenge again, I really enjoyed it. I was really pleased to improve my drawing skills so much and I had a lot of fun with using the gelli plate. My Instagram tag is alicejone57. 

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