Time is everything lately. With the day-job workload, re-working my first novel, and the imminent moving house, it’s tough to find quality time to sit and draw. But keeping up the practice is essential. draw365 was the answer. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Started by Regina Agu, draw365 encourages the creation of at least one drawing, ever single day. That’s a tough call for those of us hardly finding the time to do anything other than work these days. But that is partly the beauty of the idea.

Any drawing is good. Whether it be a multi-hour piece or a simple scribble, putting marks on paper to represent something is a worthy exercise and, simply, you cannot improve without actually doing it.

Limited time and limited life

One of the strongest periods of my illustrative development came when I worked as an editorial artist for a daily newspaper. During the original Gulf War, I had the daily task of meeting the 12 noon deadline by supplying the appropriate diagrams, maps, illustrations for that day’s news. It taught m to work and think fast and to meet a very tight deadline at all cost.

draw365, to me, reminds me of that exciting time. I spend between 15 and 45 minutes on average on a draw365 drawing. Much less than I would like, I’ll admit, but that is about the limit of what I can slot into my day around the essentials.

Yet that time is enough. I have some specific aims of look and style I want to achieve when working in materials such as charcoal and compressed charcoal. The brief time commitment of the daily draw365 enables me to experiment and explore in a way I had not considered before. It loosens the inhibitions to try a new technique, a new style, because the time investment makes potential failure that much less painful: if I waste 45 minutes of my day, it really does not matter!

Just over a month

Each day I feel as if I am homing-in on my target. As I look back on the past month of drawings I see progress – progress based on my own, personal measure of whether a piece is successful or not (generally a set of parameters of what I want to achieve with each individual drawing). Sure there are some clangers in there, but the dead ends are as valuable as the triumphs.

draw365 is exciting and motivating. And using it for exploration and experimentation brings an extra level of value to me, making the time and effort that much more worthwhile.

My most recent draw365 creations can be seen in the sidebar of this blog’s home page, on my draw365 posterous blog, and on my flickr. Plenty more draw365 artists on twitter and flickr.

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All illustrations © Neil Dixon 2008 РAll rights reserved.

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Looking for an independent and confident designer in web design, flash, usability, layout and production. This full time job is based in London. (You must have legal right to work in the UK)

Essential skills:
• Photoshop skills for creation of web graphics for headers, banners, and media support materials
• Flash skills for creation of media promotion and support material
• Familiarity using online administration and content management systems
• Understanding of HTML, CSS, and web page creation
• Familiarity with online audio and video media
• Strong communication skills
• You enjoy technology and its uses in everyday life.
• You enjoy working in a fast paced environment where quick turnaround is critical.
• You are an energetic, social and outgoing individual.

Tasks:
1. Management of media property websites, supporting websites, and other related properties
2. Perform scheduled uploads of audio and video media
3. Reporting of all show specific content and activity
4. Marketing of show content across the web and social networks
5. Management of multiple show and presenter social network properties
6. Proactive research and proposal of new show marketing opportunities

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read more

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First some time yesterday morning to plan out the workload leading up to release of the promos and prelude episode by the end of November. There is a huge amount to accomplish – far more than any other individual episode, as I have to create a wealth of material from scratch which can be used again and again in future episodes. This consists of relatively straightforward tasks such as graphics and banners (branding, easy enough for me with my background in the field), to sounds, atmospheric, incidental and the all important theme music.

Following a recent confidence boost regarding music production (see last paragraph of that post), I decided that I would compose the music myself. So yesterday sat down with keyboard and Reason with the aim of at least having something roughly acceptable by the end of a two to three hour session. What came out of that time is, I am totally delighted/proud to say, a perfect theme for the project. It’s packed with mystery and drama, with a sprinkling of creepy, it’s versatile, can be created to varying lengths, and has enough melody and rhythmic elements to create a bunch of supporting musical idents along with it.

I fear the rest of this month’s project tasks will not be quite so straightforward to achieve. The massive commitment likely means a lot of late nights, over and above what I already clock up with ‘work-work’ – you know, that annoying stuff which actually pays the rent. What is comforting to know is that it is achievable, based on my calculations of how long each task will take and the projected amount of free time I have in the coming weeks. The joys of OmniPlan to help me get organised on all this.

The prelude episode is scheduled for release on or before – you can’t knock me for the optimism – November 30. Keep checking at TableRappers.com this month as things will start to develop there as the project leads up to kickoff.

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As per usual, life doesn’t provide me with the luxuries of time to make this all sing beautifully in one session, so some evolution will occur over the coming days/weeks.

One of the most important additions is to enable you, discerning reader, to filter out the rubbish you are not interested in. In the right hand column, you will see the top main sections of this blog, to which every post will be assigned. So if you are only interested in my comment on podcasting, bookmark the podcasting pages. Easy.

Now don’t you go around saying I don’t give you nuffin’.

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• A long weekend in Edinburgh – thanks Ewan!
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Music from the Podsafe Music Network
Fly Fly Fly – Adrina Thorpe
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Direct link to the show
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In this episode I talk about what’s been happening over the past months to keep me away from the microphone, last night’s Geek Dinner in London, today’s mighty bang north of London (Fuel Depot in Hertfordshire), smoke and a company’s image, and the smelly guy downstairs gets a new bathroom.

This was a fun show to do and about darn time I got around to it. Thanks to everyone who have been pestering me over recent weeks to get on and record another podcast – your support is very much appreciated!

< click to download.
The RSS feed for future podcasts is: http://neildixon.com/archives/category/podcasts/feed/rss2/

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