Happy New Year 2011 and My Sketchbook Project

I hope your 2011 will be wonderful and you can reach all your goals:) I don't really have any particular goals for 2011. My main hope is great health for people that I love, so they can be around me forever. Last year has been great, but there was an unexpected thing that would change my life and definitely affect my artwork of which I would have no control at all. It was quite scary when I thought of it.
The other thing that I want for 2011 is for me to keep making art. I'm making art because I need to make it. Artistically, I need to paint for my own satisfaction. I don't paint something because I think that's what currently works or that's what people see as cool or even worse....something lucrative. I don't really care about it and I try not to be bothered by it. I said trying because sometimes you just can't control the distracting 'noise' around you. When I check my facebook, blog, twitter, or any other things for a tiny bit, I encounter that 'noise'. It can be motivating at times, but sometimes it's just not healthy for my mood..hehe.
I was kinda slacking on all of those fb, twitter, and even this blog during holiday season and it actually felt great to kinda ignore them. DH and I had a pretty relaxing Christmas and New Year...just the two of us. We were glad that we didn't plan to go anywhere because that snow blizzard was pretty bad. We had movie marathon and lots of chinese food ^_*

I finally finished my sketchbook project before new year. I haven't sent it, so I'm pretty sure I will add itty bitty things here and there when I flip through the book. I plan to send it out this week.
I have some pros and cons about this project. It's completely personal and I'm pretty sure other people will have different feeling about this project.
I honestly think it's a great idea. A project involving your creativity and promoting artwork to this world, is just amazing!
When I signed up for this project, I had plenty of time to do it. I knew it would be challenging because I didn't sketch and still don't do it on daily basis. I would doodle something on my moleskine when I have an idea, draw it on bigger paper , then transfer it on canvas. Most of the time, I will just jot down the idea instead of doodling it. Ideas sometimes come out when I'm in the middle of painting. Writing it down is nice because I don't really have to pause in the middle of working on a painting for too long. Anyway, after I got the sketchbook, other things came up so I had to postpone this project. I didn't start it again until the end of November.
The other challenge is from the book itself. The paper is really really thin. You can substitute to better paper  rebinding the book, but I don't do that because I'm not crafty and I didn't sign up to this project because it would highlight crafty skill. For me, the thin paper restricts my creativity. I can't create something completely spontaneous on each page because I have to take the fragile paper into consideration. Graphite drawing just doesn't look right because it doesn't blend right. I can only do simple painting to avoid the colors to show up on the other page and turn each page into super wrinkly page.
It's an interesting experience and I'm glad I do it, but I don't think I'll do it again in the future.
Some humble sketches from the book