French graphic designer Madison Rengnez, based in São Paulo, commits to a drawing every day in 2026, using a random word generator to banish creative block and graphite pencil to rediscover what had quietly disappeared from his life.
It happens gradually, and then it is just gone. For Madison Rengnez, a decade of creating over 100 books for European galleries and museums had steadily pushed drawing out of his schedule until it had no place in it at all. The creative energy that feeds everything else, work, relationships, daily life, had drained with it. The solution, when it came, was not complicated: buy some A6 sketchbooks and pick up a pencil.
Art Roulette is a project built on deliberate simplicity. Rengnez draws every day in 2026, 360 days in total, working exclusively in graphite on small-format paper. To remove the paralysis of deciding what to draw, he uses an online random word generator, restricting himself to nouns. The constraint does exactly what it is supposed to: it forces him toward subjects he would never have chosen, expands his technique and keeps the following day interesting. The process is unglamorous by design, and that is the point.
After each month, the drawings are scanned, lightly edited in Photoshop for cleaning and contrast, and laid out as cards and small posters in InDesign, an exercise that keeps his design skills active alongside the illustration practice. The project is running in parallel with his professional life, not replacing it, and after just over a month that balance was already producing results. The energy that had disappeared was coming back, redirectable to every other part of his life.
“I hope this project can inspire other people to find their own way of keeping their creative fire on,” Rengnez says. The mechanics of Art Roulette are specific to him: his sketchbooks, his word generator, his monthly card-making ritual. But the underlying logic, that discipline and constraint can restore what open-ended time cannot, is transferable to anyone who has watched their creative practice quietly disappear.
Madison Rengnez is a French freelance graphic designer based in São Paulo, working in the publishing industry. Over the past decade he has created more than 100 books for European galleries and museums.
ARTIST LINK
madrenstudio.com
Art Roulette 2026. Graphite pencil on A6 paper, daily. Self-promotion cards produced monthly in Adobe InDesign. Project ongoing throughout 2026.
