26 Mugs, 100 Monkeys

A drawing from my "Private-Play" Journal. 26 coffee mugs from imagination, drawn in one session.

Noah Scalin in "365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day & Change Your Life!" has inspired a number of bloggers. Quantity is generated by this practice, but more importantly, I think, perseverance & continuity. It's a daily workout of creative muscles. 

I'll never forget the art show at the Smithsonian in the 80's, "Yani, The Brush of Innocence" by a Chinese child prodigy. Her prolific calligraphic paintings included a scroll in which she challenged herself to paint 100 monkeys in 100 different positions in one session. I'm not a child, nor a prodigy, but I enjoyed my 26 mugs. And that's the beauty of the accessibility of art & education & books in our culture: the enrichment of individual lives, no matter what the degree of inherent talent.

Shaun Tan has a new book, "The Bird King: an artist's notebook". Tan is an accomplished artist of very refined graphic novels such as "The Arrival". This is a powerful story of the experience of the displaced immigrant. In "The Bird King" he features selections from his private journal of "doodles" & drawing experiments. There is only one thing to do to confront "artist's block", he writes. "Just start drawing", where the meaning of the drawing is secondary to the "simple act of making". Klee called it "Going for a walk with a line."

Will I try  to draw more than 26 mugs in a sitting at another time, in the style of Yani? Probably not. But a little series involving something else? Yes!