My Personal Odyssey

Ive come up with an art project and I think it is going to be somewhat of a challenge, but I can't wait to get started on it! I got the idea form an old language arts project of my little brother's. It's called "My Personal Odyssey" and it was originally supposed to be a scrapbook of narrative essays of a bunch of different topics like the story of your birth, education, personal goals, etc.

I've decided to turn it into an art project where each topic is the subject of an art piece in my sketchbook. I've already got some great ideas for some of them, but I'm not sure what to do about the others... Here's the list of topics my brother's teacher gave him:

• The odyssey of your birth
• Your musical odyssey
• Your childhood odyssey- the early years
• Your family odyssey- traditions, family members, family lore, family vacations, interesting and unusual family members
• Your friendship odyssey
• Turning points
• Moments of epiphany
• Your educational odyssey- as a student and a teacher
• Your proud moments, achievements, victories and awards
• Special/favourite characters and people in your life- heroes, role models, fictional chracters
• Your sports, interests, hobbies, passions
• Your future careers odyssey
• Your spiritual journey
• Your maxims, values, philosophy
• Your travel odyssey
• Your hopes, goals, dreams
• Your odyssey for your wellness/well-being... physically, emotionally, mentally, etc.
• Your creative/artistic side (yes, kind of redundant in this case, but just giving a list, and I think this could mean poetry and photography as well)
• Your adventurous side
• The odyssey of your fears and anxiety
• Personality traits
• Anything else you can think of!

I already have two different ideas that I can't choose between for the odyssey of my birth. I was thinking of either doing a colored pencil drawing of a baby in the womb and then journaling the story of my birth and naming or doing a kind of comic strip/graphic novel-type thing that depicted the event. I really like the comic strip idea and I can totally see it in my mind, but I'm just not sure I have the skill to draw it... Either way those are two ideas for that one.

For my friendship odyssey I was going to use photography and photograph me and my best friend. I've considered also sketching as well. I'm still not sure yet.

For my musical odyssey I was thinking of something collage like and multi-media. I was going to either draw or paint the keys of a piano on the bottom of the spread, then break a CD into pieces and make a music note mural and draw a large G-clef sign but in words with the names of all my favorite musicians.

My travel odyssey I was thinking could be a montage: a kind of mix between collage and drawing. I've never done a proper one so I think it could be fun to try it.

I originally thought that each subject would fit on one spread int eh sketchbook, but now that I'm really thinking of it, I think some may take up a couple of pages. Like my family one and maybe even the friendship one. I'll most likely post the scanned images of each page :)