Entries from: April 2009
Color Inspired by Poetry
April 14th, 2009, Comments (19)
intuitive art detail
Last night I attended the second in a series of Intuitive Painting classes I'm taking (taught by the super sweet, Adria Arch.) We first focused on a series of small (5"x7") collages we'd made of color torn from magazines. Last week, one of the assignments was to paint in colors I normally avoid (for me those were pinks, yellows, oranges) and I used that painting for my Full Pink Moon dreamboard. Well, oddly enough, the color collage I liked best was full of rich pinks and oranges! Go figure. Try it out for yourself. Paint with colors you normally dislike or avoid and see what happens. It might just change your mind about them!
In last night's class we focused on working a few smaller pieces at the same time, using a poem we'd selected as our inspiration. We were asked not to get too literal with the poem (in other words we weren't going to illustrate it), but to let our general feeling about the poem guide us in our color choices and paint strokes.
I, along with a few other students in class chose a piece from Mary Oliver. I picked her poem Wild Geese and although I wasn't thinking about it at the time, I have a feeling my choice was guided by the mother goose I saw on a walk on Friday afternoon. I happened to peek over a bridge to look at the waterfall there and spotted her there on a cement barrier. At first I thought she was just sleeping, but then when I saw the sticks and fuzz surrounding her, I suspeced it must be a nest. I watched her for awhile and she noticed me watching. At one point she stood up and revealed 5 or 6 eggs. I snapped a picture of her with my iphone. Not the best picture in the world as I couldn't zoom in on her, but I love the tree and sky reflections it captured.
I thought it was so sweet, but then I started to worry about the baby geese (goslings). They're so close to this waterfall. Do you think they'll be able to swim away from it when they're old enough to swim? I was up last night worrying about the goslings and couldn't sleep, so eventually I just imagined them easily swimming into the river and that seemed to help. I'm going to have to trust that the Momma goose knew what she was doing nesting there.
Anyways, the Mary Oliver poem is lovely and I thought I'd share it with you in case it inspires some artwork for you! Poetry is so evocative. Try using a favorite piece of literature and imagine what colors it brings to mind for you. Use that as the start for your next piece of art.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I ended up using different parts of the poem to inspire the three different pieces I was working on. Each piece below was inspired by the lines above it:
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes
They're all quite different! None of them feel complete really, but it was fun to play with color and layering and different ways of approaching a painting inspired by poetry.
I've got much to do and much more to share with you, but for now, do check out my interview at Pecannoot!! And a huge thank you to Jess for inviting me to be the first ever interviewee on Pecannoot! What a treat!
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: April 13th – April 19th
April 13th, 2009, Comments (19)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 4/13/09 - 4/19/09.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.
If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or on the "Mr. Linky" widget.
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for April is color. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the theme here.
Happy Creating!!
"I love color. A visit to the grocery store is a treat – all those beautiful fruits and vegetables!"
Joyce Ward
p.s. Want some more support on your creative journey? Join me on a gremlin-busting, playful Art Picnic happening on Saturday, April 25th!
Painting a Full Pink Moon Dreamboard
April 9th, 2009, Comments (27)
I am quite fond of the moon and it turns up quite a bit in my art. When I heard that this full moon is called the Full Pink Moon, I thought how perfect that I'd just painted a big pink painting in my Intuitve Painting class on Monday!
The lovely Jamie Ridler leads a full moon dreamboard challenge on her blog and I wanted to participate in this one. All the dreamboards (or vision boards) I've created in the past have been with magazine images, but I thought it might be fun to paint a dreamboard using the big pink painting I'd created as the base. First, I drew a little sketch intuitively, focusing on what I wanted to see bloom in my life. I drew a girl soaring, a girl peacefully sitting in a flower, and a house. At the bottom I wrote blossom and bloom with two more lotus-like flowers. And then I brought that sketch to the big pink painting (it's 18"x24") and used it as the background for the scene that unfurled. The clouds sort of came as I went along. I can't tell if the soaring girl is hanging on the clouds or pushing them up into the air. I may work on this further, but I wanted to get it up tonight.
detail
What is it that you are wanting to blossom and bloom in your life? Could you use a colorful painting as the base for a dreamboard?
Intuitive Art and Committing to your Creativity
April 7th, 2009, Comments (26)
Last night I attended the first of a series of Intuitive Painting classes I signed up for. Before the class started, I received an email from the teacher saying that the first class was going to be all about color. I laughed at the synchronicity of it, considering this month's theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge is color!
The first class was a feast for the senses. Each student was given a packet with a scent in it and then we were asked to create a color based on that scent. Mine was a yummy spice and the color I created was a warm reddish-brown. We all shared our colors and then used our color, along with the color of a classmate, to simply play with paint. I let my paint drip and run at first. We painted very quickly, so each of these pieces could be developed with further (all except the one directly below are 18"x24") or used as the beginning of a painting later on. The idea in moving quickly is to kick out the inner-judge and get painting, to try new things, to experiment. The first piece (below), created something that looked a bit like a face.
In the next piece, we used the first two colors, plus one more. The result of that one is the first image in this post. It was fun to play, to splatter, spray, scrape, and smoosh paint and just see what happens. In the next piece, we added one more color, using something a little unusual for us. I don't use a lot of yellow, I tried adding that to the piece below.
We quickly moved on to the next, where the teacher encouraged us to paint with colors that we have a strong feeling for (like or dislike). I'm not a big fan of pink (I paint with it pretty rarely, so I just went nuts with the pink paint and added some yellow too.) As you can see, Emma especially liked that one.
It was a fun class and I'm looking forward to doing some more playing next week!
One thing that's great about signing up for a class like this, is that it gives you a set time each week, when rain or shine, you're going to honor your commitment to create. And yes, signing up and paying for it is helpful in getting me to actually show up at the specified time and place. How do you make commitments to your creativity? Here are some of the things I do:
*I participate in challenges (like the Creative Every Day Challenge) to help keep me focused.
*I get support (like my wonderful coach, Kathy who just started her own blog!).
*I take classes, online and in-person.
*I show up to create even when I'm not feeling inspired.
*I schedule time for creative projects I want to see fulfilled (literally picking days and times and putting them in my calendar!)
*I take time off to rest and re-fill the well. (We all have creative cycles.)
*I ask for help when I need it. (This one can be hard for me, but I'm working on it.)
*I find inspiration everywhere.
*I use a theme word for the year (Leap!) and keep it posted in front of my desk to remind me.
How do you commit to your creativity?
p.s. One of the reasons I started offering Art Picnic teleclasses was because I know that having a set time on your calendar to focus on creating is incredibly helpful in maintaining a creative practice. Want to make a date with your creativity? Join us on the 25th for the next Art Picnic workshop!
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: April 6th – April 12th
April 6th, 2009, Comments (14)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 4/6/09 - 4/12/09.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! (If you're reading this in a RSS reader, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.)
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.
If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or on the "Mr. Linky" widget.
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for April is color. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the theme here.
Happy Creating!!
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
~Joan Miro
Spanish Surrealist Painter and Sculptor, 1893-1983
p.s. Join me on a gremlin-busting, playful Art Picnic happening on Saturday, April 25th!
Celebrate Your Creativity
April 4th, 2009, Comments (7)
Yesterday, I participated in a super fun celebration call with many fabulously creative women. We gathered by phone to celebrate the end of Jamie Ridler's book club reading of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women (great read, by the way!) and to launch the product Jamie put together, Your Creative Spark.
You can listen to the call here and I recommend listening to it as it's super fun and you get to hear about the wonderful topic of celebration. Many of us on the call, myself included, talked about how we have some trouble with celebrating. For me, it has been something I never really thought much about. When I finish something, my tendency is to dust myself off and move on to the next thing.
But there's something to be said for taking a moment to celebrate your successes, no matter how small. On the call, I mentioned how I've learned a lot about celebrating from the hubster. The way he celebrates a meal he's cooked is hilarious, but it's also fun! He oohs and ahhs over every bite and suddenly you find yourself laughing and appreciating every bite too.
Why not celebrate every bite? Life is delicious!
More recently, as I've recognized the importance of celebration, I've been taking time to celebrate, usually in the form of a happy dance. A little jig (done in your chair or around the room) can be so uplifting and a simple way to celebrate those little successes we experience every day. Why not give it a try?
I'm curious, what do you do to celebrate? How does it impact your creative process?
I hadn't thought much about how celebrating was affecting my creative process until Jamie asked the question, but when I considered it, I realized that celebration is about all self-care and valuing yourself. And you can always create from a stronger place when you're taking good care of you.
Your Creative Spark is now available for purchase from Jamie. It's jam-packed with loads of inspiration from incredibly creative women such as Jennifer Lee, Andrea Scher, Jessie Marianello, Melba, McMullin, Goddess Leonie, myself, and many others! The interviews Jamie did over the last 12 weeks are included in audio and transcript form and there's also some bonus articles from several of the interviewees. Through midnight on April 5th you can get $10 off the price by using the Discount code "celebrate," so if you're thinking about grabbing a copy, now's the time! Jamie did such a fabulous job putting this together (happy dance for Jamie!) and she's such a creative rock star. Thank you again, Jamie, for inviting me to be a part of this fantastic project!
Click here to view more details about Your Creative Spark.
Colorful Poems
April 3rd, 2009, Comments (17)
Our way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
~Rumi
April is National Poetry month. I love the idea of playing with the Creative Every Day Challenge's theme of color and poetry. How could you mesh the two?
You could:
*Write about yourself as a color, as in "I am blue. I am soft, ethereal, just-woken."
*Write about how a color feels, how it smells, and tastes.
*Paint a wash of your favorite color in a journal and write the lines of your favorite poems over it.
*Play with writing a poem in color, mixing the words with what colors you imagine them to be.
*Turn your head to the right, what's the first color you see? Right a poem about it.
*Use a colorful photograph as the jumping off point for a piece of poetry.
*What is your least favorite color? What is it about that color that you dislike? Write free-form style about it.
*Read a favorite poem. Does it seem to reflect a certain color for you?
*What childhood memories does the color red bring up for you? Let that be a starting point. Red makes me think of my sister's stained t-shirts, popsicles in summer that turned our tongues red, the choke berries in the woods that made me wonder if they really did make a person choke, the red jumpsuit I was wearing the day I got my first period.
Color can hold so many associations, so many memories. Where do those color memories take you?
For more poetry goodness, check out:
*Resources for writing poetry with kids
Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.
~Mary Oliver
And I couldn't resist sharing...more Mary Oliver below...
(more...)What Do Your Color Choices Say?
April 2nd, 2009, Comments (7)
Spring is such a fantastic time to focus on delicious color! I hope you'll have fun playing with the Creative Every Day Challenge's totally optional theme of color this month!
mermaids
I took the first bit of playful color I painted for the theme's announcement and created this piece out of it. I was just playing with color when I started it, but as I do with so much of my art, I started to see things in it, in this case, a pair of mermaids. And I see something else in it, something maybe I'll play with in another piece. Do you see the bird? Here's it's face:
mermaids detail
What colors are you drawn to right now? Let your self play with them. If you're playing with paint, squirt the colors right on the canvas, move them around, let your intuition guide you in the strokes you use, the colors you choose, the places you stop and start.
Let the paint dry and then step back and see if you're seeing anything there. Are you seeing a figure? A face? An animal? A tree? Start to emphasize the image you see. Bring some areas forward and let others fade into the background. Is there a story developing?
What's the feeling your color choices are evoking? Does it express something that you are feeling in your everyday life? What are your color choices trying to tell you?
I'd love to hear about what colors you're feeling especially drawn to right now!
p.s. The free Dream Call with Lianne Raymond is happening tonight! Sign up here if you'd like to join in!
