50 Day State-themed Design Challenge via Jitney's Journeys // Illustration and Gouache Paintings by Whitney Todd [Alaska - Northern Lights]

Happy December!! This year has flown by. We've had quite a few transitions in our family in 2015 between changing our focus from 'craft-based' to 'art and design-based' with Jitney's, and, of course, the exciting addition of our little Mia Kai arriving next year in April. Yay!!

This October, I decided to challenge myself with a 50 Day Design Challenge. I've seen 100 Day Design Challenges but I knew that would be a little too ambitious for me. So I cut it in half and decided to do a theme of states... because there are 50 of them. ;) After researching the symbols for each state (tree, flower, fruit, animal, flag, insect, etc.), I picked a final contestant for each state and daily tackled the challenge of illustrating that symbol using pencil and gouache (and sometimes pen).

Complete transparency here: I cheated some days and knocked out a few at a time because I knew our schedule this fall would be insane between travel and holidays. My gouache and watercolor supplies are pretty easy to take on travel with us so I knew that would be my medium of choice.

Some days I would stray from the symbols (i.e. Alaska) and other days I would pick a smaller piece of that symbol to focus on (i.e. white-tailed deer = antler). I'm a little more than half way finished with this challenge and I have loved it so far! Several of the paintings have brought back memories of adventures in those states and other paintings have prompted me to call friends that live in those states.

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