Creative Every Day

More Inspiration

February 4th, 2008

In a bit of synchronicity, shortly after I finished the previous post about Inpiration Treasure Hunts, I found out about (via the Scoop) a new ezine called "Inspiration" from the blog, "design for mankind." It's free to download and full of inspiring pictures and snippets of what inspires a wide variety of creative folks. Definitely worth checking out!!!

I shared my Inspiration board the other day, which is sort of a catching place for random things I want to keep in my line of sight. But there are plenty of things that don't make it to the board. Here are just some of those things that inspire me:

• the fish tank in our home
• the color combinations I see in the sky set off against the trees
• shapes in the grain of wood, glass bottles, and puddles
• poems
• dreams
• doodling
• bookstores and libraries
• chopping vedgetables
• peeking into homes on real estate websites
• teeny tiny boxes
• beautiful handwriting
• the sound of water
• birds
• greenhouses
• blank paper

How about you? What inspires you? Where do you find unexpected bits of inspiration?

Patti has a great post on her blog about the everyday objects of her life. I was drawn in by the art which illustrates her essay and the beautiful poem by Billy Collins. After reading many of his poems on Patti's blog, 37 Days, I picked up a book of his poetry (Nine Horses), on Saturday at a little independent book store in Portsmouth. Poetry is a wonderful source of inspiration, which reminds me of this beautiful quote:

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. - Plutarch

At the end of her post, Patti has a great suggestion for those of us on the Creative Every Day 2008 journey or anyone else really who wants to capture the everyday art in their lives. It's simple and beautiful and certainly manageable. Patti's challenge is:

Draw the outline of a small 2”x2” square on a piece of paper or on a roll of a child’s art paper. A manageable, consistent size. Each day, draw a new square. And create something on one of these squares every day to remind you of your day—it can be a portrait of a simple object you love. It can be a record of your day, how you felt, the color of that day for you—in collage or pencil or paints. It can be a short poem or a quote or a solid block of color. It can be anything you want it to be. It's a small size; you can do this. Perhaps it is a painting of an ambrosia apple every day for two weeks until you really see it. Create one every day for a year. That’s what life is.

What would your squares be filled with?

(pictures above: A damask wallpaper pattern that inspires me; 3 boxes painted with images of nightmares I've had, made for my Art Every Day Month project one year; bird drawings done for another year's Art Every Day Month; Recently finished piece, A Timely Message; butterflies on display at the Botanical Gardens in Montreal.)

 

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