It is a beautiful thing - a visual diary. Someone's record of their day, infused with meaning that often only they understand. I began my first in 1998 through a project coordinated by Adele Outerridge from The Studio in Brisbane which she shares with Wim de Vos. There were eight of us, Australia wide, this first year. Artists who committed to doing a drawing a day - not a work of art, but a visual record of what we did that day, what we felt or saw. Maybe a suggestion of what we had been working on in our studios that day - a smear of paint, a torn up etching, an embossing ... one of my drawings was done with chocolate and wine after a lovely dinner party which left me with no desire to draw!
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| 1998 dAd book - susan bowers |
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| 1998 dAd book and 2006 dAd bound in 12 monthly books |
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| complex coptic binding using tabs |
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| first foray into mark making |
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| I love using transparent overlays |
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| rusting pages helped with drawing into them |
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| my first embossing |
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| transparent paper and ink |
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| dabbling with monoprints |
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| sketchings |
The dAd Project is now world wide and hundreds are involved. Adele still coordinates and she and Wim have continued to draw each day. My discipline has been sadly lacking - it sounds so easy but it is quite a difficult thing to maintain. In the first year we all found it very difficult initially, then addictive and absorbing. I have begun and stopped almost every year since 1998, some years only one or two pages have been done. I do not mind - those pages that were done are a lovely reminder of what I did, or what I thought about that day. This year I began again, stopped some time in February and decided that this blog would take place of the drawing a day.
The blogging experience is turning out to be like my daily drawing - difficult, now a little addictive and hopefully soon, absorbing. Not so much so that I do not move forward with my art practice, but as an addition to it in maintaining a certain discipline, and using it as a record of my creative processes.
