New Year, New Jrnl, New Theme, New Energy!

Whew! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

I often get these grand creative ideas, and get started with them… but because I tend to ridiculously overcomplicate literally everything, I can’t keep up the momentum and I run out of steam very quickly.

Unfortunately, one of the main things I do this with is my Jrnl. And the past couple years, it’s been pretty bad. I come up with complicated themes for the year, and then totally fail to make any of the art needed to keep the theme going for the year.

This year, I feel determined to avoid my past mistakes…

Last year I chose the theme of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It has 12 chapters, and I reasoned that a chapter a month would work very well. But I ended up not drawing a single cover page. I did color themed washi tape on my calenders each month — blue for the Pool Of Tears, green for The Rabbit Sends In A Little Bill, red for Who Stole The Tarts, and so on, but that was about it.

The year before that, the theme was the solar system. It was going to be the 9 planets (yes, including Pluto), plus the moon, the sun, and the asteroid belt. I did the first two cover pages, for Pluto and Neptune, and again kept up the washi tape theme, but over all it was a disappointment.

I realized that the thing in common for all those years — along with other years of failed theming — was that I picked things that I couldn’t just draw representatively, off the top of my head, in a way that satisfied me.

So this year, I’ve picked something that should be much simpler for me: Fruit! It’s delicious, it’s cute, vibrant, and fun, and best of all, it’s relatively easy for me to draw!

So far, I have done Lime for January, and I have chosen Strawberry for February. I’ll probably do Pineapple for March, because that’s my birthday month and my favorite fruit.

So… here’s to 2025, and hoping that I can actually keep up with things this time! 😅