A New Idea

I spent the previous night as an insomniac.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get to sleep. My brain just wouldn't switch off. There was a lot on my mind though, I keep thinking about the past and what to expect for the future - and basically I gave myself a headache. So I tried to think of something a bit more light hearted, uh, my blog. It's actually a pretty pathetic thing to mull over at 2AM in the morning, but I came up with a new idea of how to make things a bit more interesting.

As an unpublished author, I think it would be incredibly dull for me to just post stuff about my book all the time. Besides, my readers out in cyberspace (and at the present time, I don't think there's any) would get fed up of it. So what's my idea? Well, I watched a film a few months back. Normally I watch suspense/thriller films, but for reasons I cannot fathom, I watched a movie called 'Julie & Julia' - and to cut a long story short, one of them makes a blog and cooks her way through a mammoth size cookbook in under a year. So I figured, I could probably do something like that.

So am I going to cook? Absolutely not. For me, cooking toast is a big enough task.

For my project, I'm going to paint. I did visual arts all my way through high school, and although I'm a pretty amateur painter, I figured it's been a while and I should pick it up again. And my project is going to last for one year, and I will complete one painting per week (and hey, it's the first week of the year, so it'll be easy for me to remember my end date!) but painting anything is easy. I want a challenge.

In this project, I'm going to incorporate my favourite band - Linkin Park. I've been a fan of them for the last decade, and last month I was lucky enough to have met the band. For me, music is my biggest inspiration when I write, and Linkin Park, by far, impact my work the most. They have produced four very different and very unique studio albums - and then the concept entered my head about creating a painting for every song.

So, I did a few calculations this morning (with a calculator, because no, I don't do maths) and I added up every song, including interludes and instrumentals, on Linkin Park's four studio albums...Hybrid Theory - 12 tracks, Meteora - 13 tracks, Minutes To Midnight - 12 tracks, A Thousand Suns - 15 tracks. When you add those figures together, what do you get? 52. Yep, the same amount of weeks in a year. A very convenient coincidence.

So starting this week, and technically speaking I only have half a week left, I am to start and finish the first painting. I'm starting with Papercut, and working my way through to The Messenger. I've already gone out and brought a stack of canvases and paints, and I've started making some sketches in my notebook. Also, I've decided I'm only going to paint with black and white - I have a vaild reason why, but you won't understand it until the very last painting.
I'm hoping to make a start on the painting today. I'll upload pictures when I'm finished.

- JD