Creative Every Day

Art-tastic

December 9th, 2006

Oo, I made some art this weekend and it was so much fun! I started this first piece Friday  night, worked on it again this morning, went to take my dad to lunch for his birthday and then this evening finished it up. I originally had this idea when I saw last weeks IF topic "might." The week was a long one and I didn't get it done in time for IF, but I decided to do it anyways. I got the idea from my memories of wishing on stars. When I was in high school, we got a dog and as the oldest I was in charge of taking her out for the last time before bed and then at 5:30 in the morning when I got up for school. At night, particularly in the dead of winter, it was rough standing outside waiting for her to do her business. I sometimes passed the time by singing, dancing or daydreaming. But one thing I did consistently was wish on the first star I saw. You know the rhyme, right? Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. And the funny thing was, most of my wishes came true when I wished for specific things (yeah, winning the lottery never happened, since I was too young to buy tickets anyways). So, here I worked with gesso and rice paper put down haphazardly first and then painted over with acrylic and drawn with ink all on paper. It's about 16"x21". Here's a close-up:

When I finished I saw that I had big squirts of paint on my pallette and I didn't want to waste them, so I found an older collaged piece on board that I didn't like and painted over it in big swatches. When I finished, something suggested a face and so I started there, with a face and then I thought she looked like a Greek goddess. Her hair blended into the sky and I thought of constellations. So, then I made the night sky and turned shapes that suggested planets into planets with rings and I named her "Andromeda." It's about 12"x16".

It felt great to get this art in, knowing I won't have time with school tomorrow. Blah. Am I done with it yet? No. But I think I'll be leaving school a bit early tomorrow to go to an art opening, cause guess what?? My two pieces were accepted for the show I submitted them to! Woot! It's a group show with the theme of water at the Post Road Art Center. Feels great to be showing some work again, which I'll be going at again with more oomph when school ends in February. Feels good.

And hey, the two pieces above are two very different examples of inspiration. I often do what I did with the second piece, which is just to start and see what images start to appear and go with it. It's great fun. You just have to allow it to be a failure-free experience. In other words, you give yourself permission at the start to make crappy art. Makes all the experimenting much easier and more fun (for me at least!) Try it out!