I've just completed my yearlong 2016 Film Camera project but I've been thinking about what I want to accomplish for 2017 for a couple of months now.

After years of being out of art school and with our children all grown, I've been sketching and creating projects with renewed artistic energy the past 2-3 years. The local newspaper took notice of my instagram postings and included me in a story early last year about artists carving out creative time while working full time jobs. I've been trying to squeeze in time to sketch and experiment with new art supplies or processes all year long while working on the the film camera project which brings me to my project idea for 2017 - a year long Create-A-Thon!

I will be trying out a new art material or process roughly on a weekly basis, depending on how much time I want to spend on each one, while blogging about my experiments and posting photos. My bipolar mind wants to try so many things and my studio is filled with no end of creative supplies that I've been buying like crazy with A.C. Moore and Hobby Lobby coupons. I have mounds of sketchbooks as I can't pass up a good looking sketchbook when we go to a new place to visit or I take my son shopping for art supplies for school (he's in the fine art painting program at MICA).

I still love film photography and will continue practicing it in the new year, but I would like to narrow it down to just a few of my favorite cameras, which currently happen to be ones using Fuji Instax Mini and Wide films. At some point during the year I will also try to get into my darkroom that I set up over a year ago.

Here is a list of materials and processes I will be using for Create-A-Thon 2017:

1. Derwent Graphitint pencils

2. Derwent Inktense pencils

3. Derwent Aquatone pencils

4. Peerless watercolors

5. Prang Professional Pan watercolors

6. Prima Decadent Pies watercolor pans

7. Prima Classics watercolor pans

8. Prima Tropicals watercolor pans

9. Coptic Stitch Sketchbook

10. Gelli Printing

11. Museum sketching

12. Urban sketching

13. One Sketchbook, one pen, one week

14. Watercolor Painting

15. Oil painting

16. Acrylic painting

17. Oil pastel

18. Mixed media

19. Doodles

20. Live model drawing

21. Take a class

22. iPad drawing in Procreate

23. iPad drawing in Paper by 53

24. iPad drawing in Autodesk Sketchbook

25. iPad drawing in Concepts

26. iPad drawing in MediBang Paint Pro

27. Week of portrait drawing

28. Self portraits

29. Winsor and Newton Pigment markers

30. Faber Castell Pitt artist pens

31. Nicole dual tip markers

32. Grayscale Value studies

33. Line art with brush pens

34. Duct tape sketchbook

35. Dip pen and ink drawing

36. Hand lettering

37. Sketching people at the mall

38. Mono printing with 3D objects

39. Sun prints

40. Cyanotype printing

41. Darkroom printing with caffenol

42. Fuji Instax peel aparts

43. Print photo or painting on watercolor printer paper

44. Use Bristol board

45. Use mineral paper

46. Use canvas paper

47. Watercolor painting of cats

48. Loose watercolors

49. Fill one sketchbook per month

50. Toned gray sketchbook drawings

51. Toned tan sketchbook drawings

52. Christmas card art

53. Collage

54. Winsor and Newton Watercolor markers

55. Variety of Watercolor pencils

56. Tim Holtz Distress crayons

57. Tim Holtz Distress markers

58. Koi Waterbrush markers

59. Sketching with Carpenter pencils and lumber crayons

60. Make watercolor blocks

61. Drawing on the Iskn Slate

62. Drawing on Wacom Intuos tablet

63. Assemble Skilcraft Visible Head model

64. Assemble Skilcraft Visible Cow model

65. Assemble Lindberg transparent alien

66. Assemble Lindberg transparent woman

67. Draw the same subject in 5 different mediums

68. Copic marker drawing

And anything else that catches my fancy in the new year.

Week 31 - Generic plastic camera purchased at Morningstar Flea Market Antique Mall for $10. The tag said "Argus 35mm Camera" on it and came in a bright yellow box with the words "Say Cheese" and "Storer Cable", whatever that means. It also came with a cheaply made pleather carrying case. I did an internet search but could come up with nothing on a plastic Argus 35mm camera, or anything using the other words on the box. I thought at best, it could be a generic Holga or Diana type of camera. It felt quite heavy, probably had a weight in the bottom of the camera.

On the front, the lens reads "Optical Color Lens, Auto Fix Focus 50mm Lens 1:6." It has a tripod socket on the bottom and a rewind release button. I used a roll of FPP EDU 400 Black and White film from the Film Photography Project, as my color chemicals were recently expired. Photos were shot on a morning walk around Hanover, PA and also around Baltimore, MD on my lunch break. I found that the lens was much wider than the viewfinder indicated, I could have gotten closer on some of my shots.

It was very humid on the day I was trying to wind the film onto a developing reel in the changing bag, which resulted in a first failed attempt where in frustration, I shoved the film into the tank to protect it from light. I cooled off a bit and went back in while in a cool air-conditioned room. As a result the film got a little banged up with a few scratches and creases. I don't think it detracts much from the low quality of the photos that I got from this camera, I was hoping for photos with a dreamy quality and a little vignetting. The film was developed in Caffenol and scanned on Epson V500 Photo.