A little painting

Back in January, a friend at work pitched an idea on our internal watercooler blog: what if we start a creators club, with the end goal of presenting our work as an online exhibit? Before this happened, I had set an intention in January to draw this year, so I thought, what the heck, and I signed up.

We had a 12 week timeline to create our piece of art. For 10 of those 12 weeks, I wondered what I would make for the exhibit. I drew in my daily journal with ink. I doodled. When I set my intention in January, my goal for 2024 was to create a botanical journal. But as I drew every day in the early part of the year, nature and botanicals weren’t what I enjoyed drawing. Instead, I enjoyed drawing everyday objects, little reminders of quiet time in the morning with my coffee, or car chats while getting boba with our daughter, or a relaxing cocktail at the end of the day.

You see where I’m going here?

As I drew these little things in my journal, I wondered, I’m already doing this journal, how could I build on this to make something… more? Something extra, so that it’s special for the exhibit? I thought intentional composition, paint, and working on unbound paper were a good starting point. From those constraints, and the fact that I was running out of time, I finally decided to draw and paint a list of my favorite drinks. It’s called Wet Whistle. There’s a little more about it on the Creators Club website we launched today, along with creations from others who work at Automattic and like to make art.