**Waving Excitedly**

Ooh, what fun to see messages here!

Helen, you didn't mention in your intro that you're doing the City and Guilds course. Will you explain more about that at some point? We don't have that in the US and I find it very intriguing.

Another possible cool way to introduce each other... Post a picture of one of your favorite pieces of work and tell us about it...what led you to do it, what you learned, etc....

I have to confess that I made my "invite" list by simply ticking off folks whose blogs I look at regularly and enjoy reading, with art I'm drawn to and inspired by. It's funny how many of you (almost all, I think) emailed me to say some version of "I'm not sure I belong in this group of artists!" So, we all pretty much share the same insecurities, give or take the peculiar worry... And I think it'll be great to share our work when our experience levels and backgrounds are so diverse.

By the way, I had a thought... For some, every two months was as much as they felt they could commit to, given other life activities. (Oh yeah, those pesky things like work and household matters and other art goals.) But it occurred to me that anyone who was interested in between "official deadlines" could agree to in-between monthly things...Mini, unofficial challenges, sort of, for any number of the group who want to do those? That way, those of us who want to get ourselves working more spontaneously (moi, I mean) can have the opportunity to do more frequent challenges? I find it helpful to have deadlines for art production, as it really spurs me to get to creating stuff.

Anyway, that might make it weird for those who just want to stick to the every-other-month thing. Or would it? What do you think?

(Maybe I'm just suffering from an abundance of enthusiasm at seeing this cool group get started...)