As a result of my post last week on Seasonal Produce & Seasonal Baking as well as #ArtAdventCalendar (more about that below), I’ve been thinking about other winter-related art I’ve created. I looked in my Art Archives 😁 and found two pieces of art that for various reasons I’ve never shared online (until now!).
Aspens in Winter
I created the first of these two, Aspens in Winter, in 2020, during an art webinar on masking (masking means placing removable material like painter’s tape on the paper before painting, to mask off specific areas so they don’t get painted).
The instructor suggested using packing tape to mask off areas we wanted to keep white, like my trees, so that these areas would retain the white of the paper, but I found that the packing tape damaged my paper. I’ve had excellent success using Scotch blue painter’s tape and Winsor & Newton Colourless Art Masking Fluid for masking and highly recommend both.
I hadn’t posted Aspens in Winter online before because I thought “Oh, this is just a practice piece for a webinar I took.” Revisiting it 3 years later, I realize that (of course) just because art is “a practice piece” doesn’t diminish its value. Now I view it with a different eye (or two) and I like this piece for its cool, wintry, monochromatic color palette.
Happy Holidays
I created most of the second piece of art, Happy Holidays, in 2018, but it just wasn’t jelling for me, so I put it aside until last week when I was thinking about holiday art again. Finding it in my Art Archive, I conceived of a way to finish the piece to my liking—so here it is, 5 years after I started it!
#ArtAdventCalendar
I was also thinking about seasonal art thanks to #ArtAdventCalendar, a social media hashtag created by Canadian artist Jay Bigam. Social media has gotten bad press lately (and deservedly so in some cases…yes, Twitter/X and Meta…I’m talking about you) so I want to share a positive social media story!
Jay started #ArtAdventCalendar in 2015 “with the idea that things were somewhat dark and bleak and it would be nice to improve everyone’s Twitter timelines by posting and retweeting a bunch of art.”
Artists who participate in #ArtAdventCalendar post original pieces of art between December 1 & 24, and include the hashtag #ArtAdventCalendar in their posts. The art can be a painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, beading, photography, jewelry…Jay says, “If it’s art and it beautifies the timeline, you’ll see it.”
Here’s art of mine I tagged with #ArtAdventCalendar on Mastodon a few days ago. This is from my year-long Tucson Color Journal series in which I painted 1 color/day of something in nature I saw in or from my yard.
#ArtAdventCalendar has proven so popular that Jay now runs this on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads (I see it on Mastodon, the only social media account I have).
Even though Jay started this on Twitter, he recently posted on his website that “I have made the choice to not run the event on Twitter in 2023. I can not support the direction the platform has taken in the last year and do not want to support it by providing content and clicks.” Given that I stopped posting on Twitter/X last year and closed my Twitter account for the same reasons Jay stated, I applaud Jay’s decision!
Jay’s #ArtAdventCalendar idea embraces the ideals of beauty and positivity, two ideals I hold near and dear. You can view #ArtAdventCalendar postings on Mastodon, and (unlike many other social media services) you don’t need an account to view posts on Mastodon. And, by the way, Jay creates awesome paintings of turbulent, stormy skies—they’re worth checking out!