{"id":1716,"date":"2025-09-18T15:31:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2025-09-18T15:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:31:12","slug":"start-with-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/2025\/09\/18\/start-with-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Start With Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of you may remember that I participate in Art Challenges posted on the Fine Art America and Pixels sites. These challenges last for various time periods and each one highlights a different subject. Some challenges allow different mediums to be used throughout the time period but the last one I participated in required the use of the same medium throughout the entire challenge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have completed three day, seven day and month long challenges as well as three that lasted for an entire year with one of those requiring a new image daily and the other two requiring one new image per week. It takes a little confidence to start one of these year long undertakings with the ultimate goal of finishing the entire challenge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently finished the second weekly challenge whose theme was The World Inside. The image for Week 51 was titled Crossword Confidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as it took a level of confidence to start a year long art challenge it also takes confidence to start and complete an entire crossword puzzle in ink!<\/strong><\/p>\n

As you can see in the featured image, the words for a crossword puzzle were being filled in with a ballpoint pen. Filling in the puzzle with ink portrays a confidence that the word being used is the right one and will not need to be erased and changed when an intersecting word is filled in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A little information on these puzzles: Crossword puzzles are word puzzles with numbered squares arranged in a grid. White squares are for the letters and black squares separate the words. The entire puzzle is itself created as a square. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Clues are given for words whose letters fit in those squares. The words intersect with each other where one or more of their letters match. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Crossword puzzle grids can vary according to the country or region where they are created. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Many crossword puzzles are based on a theme and some called a metapuzzle actually have a second puzzle within the completed puzzle. The words to the second puzzle are ones that are highlighted by gray or possibly yellow squares.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The earliest crossword puzzles in the United States became popular in 1910.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as I start these art challenges with confidence, I now work crossword puzzles in ink.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, to be perfectly honest with you, I am mainly doing that because the letters written in ink are much easier to see than the ones written in pencil!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out my most recent challenge images in the \u201cRecently Added\u201d Gallery found on my art site by clicking here<\/a> .<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you may remember that I participate in Art Challenges posted on the Fine Art America and Pixels sites. These challenges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[100,1895,731,143,1890,1891,1892,1894,326,837,1889,1893,1015],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-challenge","tag-complete","tag-completed","tag-confidence","tag-crossword","tag-crossword-puzzles","tag-grid","tag-information","tag-ink","tag-pencil","tag-puzzles","tag-squares","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourartsmagazine.com\/kathykmcclellan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}