Community Profile

Originally this was a back up comm for a community based on LiveJournal, here: naarmamo. You're welcome to post over at the LJ community as well, but currently it's more active on DreamWidth.

(Inter)National Art Making Month

You know NaNoWriMo? It's the thing where you try to write a 50 000 word novel in November.

NaArMaMo is a lot like that only with art instead of writing. Not that writing isn't art. Only, you know. It's about creating art for a month when usually you might be doing something else.

We're in no way anything to do with NaNoWriMo, I just stole the naming strategy without thinking.

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The basic premise:

Basically in August we hope to make one piece of art every day. NOT NECESSARILY VERY GOOD ART. But a finished achievement of artistic endeavour.

A picture, a painting, a photo, an icon, a sketch, stick figures, a line on a page, a model, a sculpture, a finger painting, a finger print, a song, a poem, an interpretive dance, a bruise, a something. We are surprisingly non-judgey about what counts as art:)

And it really doesn't have to be very good. I try to stress that quite a lot. There are people here who have never drawn a thing, people who only ever do art in August, people who are very much doing it for fun rather than greatness. There are also people who are very good at art indeed, but who still find it a challenge to devote time to it every single day. Don't be intimidated, it's all good.

With it being every day for a month, the emphasis is much more on getting something done rather than getting it done particularly well.

And, quite importantly, you can always just lie at the end and claim that you managed it even if you gave up entirely and ate ice cream. No one will know. \o/

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The structure:

The most basic description of almost-rules that I can come up with which hopefully everyone mostly agrees on:

• You try to make one distinct piece of art every day. That is a different piece of art every day, rather than one big project over all the days. So at the end of August you will hopefully have 31 pieces of art, all made by you. They really don't have to be good, and they can be very quick and rough. I can't tell you how much people here aren't going to judge you for a twenty second scribble if that's all you had time for that day.
  
  
• However, if you do miss days then you can catch them up afterwards, ie make two pieces of art one day after that. It's not strictly necessary to catch up, it depends on what you set out to achieve and what you feel really works for you. Nobody is going to be counting, and everyone would rather you carried on and did as many days in August as were left, rather than beating yourself up for missing one or two and struggling to catch up.
  
  
• It's not very okay to make art in advance of your days because you shouldn't be planning to miss days, and the main challenge is to try to fit art in every day even when it seems it'll be difficult. But on the other hand it's all quite relaxed and no one is going to really care or know or mind or anything.
  
  
• You WIN at Naarmamo if you achieve whatever it was you set out to achieve. Is actually what it comes to. It's very hard to lose. And on day 31 you are encouraged to design your own certificate to celebrate. You should totally join in.

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How it works:

• Any member may put up the daily masterpost. There should be only ONE masterpost each day in August. If you have Naarted and the masterpost is not yet up for the day, feel free to add one. Name it with the day and Naarmamo so we stay organized.
  
  
• You then comment to that post about the art you do that day. This means everyone isn't posting to the community separately every day and clogging your friendslist.
  
  
• Your comment can include scans/photos of the stuff you've done if you like, although there's no need to post pictures if you don't want to, a description and any thoughts about it will totally do. If you do want to post a picture you can either follow the instructions below to post a thumbnail, or add a link to your own journal if you prefer to post it there.
  
  
• If you're not online some days for whatever reason, you can still carry on making art every day and then post it to the correct day's master post when you get back. You can always link to those comments in the current day's comments if you want people to be able to see what you've been doing.

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Posting Pictures

The faq about adding pictures to posts and comments is here.

You should post any large pictures/photos as a thumbnail, a smaller image which links to the fullsize picture. To do that you use this code, inserting the full url for your image in the appropriate places:

<a href="URL"> <img src="URL" width=200> </a>

Change both instances of "URL" for the full address of your picture, making sure it points directly to a picture. I've also put together a (hopefully) helpful Guide To Posting Thumbnails.

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::dances everyone a bit::