Nikki's 31 Days of Waxes

I promised myself that I would do so much art over the summer, but uhm, I didn't. I mean, I tried really hard on some things, but when I stacked everything on my new shelf, it didn't look like a lot. Luckily, determined to start my new semester looking fabulously dedicated, I forced myself to be fabulously dedicated! And thus, the '31 Days of Waxes' for the month of August begun!

Lined texture bowl

Cheese!

It's true that in doing one wax a day I am not always creating the most high-grade art, but that is okay, trust me. Some things were left slightly unfinished and touched up when school started, while other things were simply 'bad ideas'. Why might I make bad ideas? If you've ever had a teacher force you to do 10, 15, 30 sketch tabs for a project, even though you knew what you wanted right away, then you might understand what I'm talking about.

Elf tree with painstaking detail

Body sans the balloon head

By giving yourself a high goal, you know you have so many sketches/pieces to make that it's okay to screw around and throw out bad ideas. When you lower the bar and allow the ideas to flow freely, you give yourself the chance to discover that, "Holy crap, this idea is actually gold!" Or, at the very least, a poor idea will probably inspire a better one. At least, whenever I let myself dick around, the latter is what happens for me!

Handable object

Kiwi Bird

Admittedly some of my days were zero waxes, while others were two, or at max three, but in the end I gathered quite a nice assortment of odd, small sized waxes; which is just great, because bright yellow wax is totally not photogenic. Actually, I should admit that I'm no longer sure which waxes were done in August and which were done earlier in the summer - I mixed myself up and lost track when loading the waxes onto a new shelf. So if you ever do a daily or weekly challenge for yourself and you really care which pieces were which, keep track in a notebook or with photos.

Unconscious / Handable object

Tea light holder / Paper weight

You may be saying, "But Nikki, there aren't 31 waxes pictured here, what gives?" Like I said, totally not photogenic, so I just posted a few of the photos I happened to have on hand. You'll have to wait to see my most delicious inventions.

Apple core

Machette of a hair accessory bowl

Starting one piece every day: I think everyone should try it. Even if your process is a very time consuming one, so you don't get too far into each piece, at the end of the month you will still have about 30 pieces to work on for the next however long it takes. This definitely works for me as I've decided that in the future I should do the base form of a group of work (including the reservoir!), then the detailed texture of the work (since I find I have to redo it anyway). Doing it that way, once I finish a batch it will be ready for the kiln (I assume)!

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