Entries from: July 2011
Creative Every Day Theme for August: Red
July 31st, 2011, Comments (9)
At the end of each month I will announce the totally optional theme for the following month. For the month of August 2011, the theme will be Red.
As always, this month's theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge is totally optional. Use it if it inspires you, continue being creative every day in your own way if it doesn't, or do something in between. You can sign up for the 2011 Creative Every Day Challenge anytime. More info can be found here and the sign-up page is here.
I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month on the blog to help keep you inspired. You can use the posts here for jumping off points or interpret the theme in your own creative way. If you need some suggestions, here are a few ideas to get you started. You could:
- *Have a red-themed day: Paint your nails red, dress in red, eat red foods. .
- *Take your camera out for a walk and capture whatever you see that's red: houses, fire hydrants, flowers...
- *Write about a moment that's made you turn red with embarrassment.
- *Paint with firey strokes and colors.
- *Create art by candlelight.
- *Use the movements of blood in your body as your inspiration.
- *Crush berries to make your own paint.
- *Work in a medium that requires heat, such as encaustic.
How to use the CED themes:
If you're feeling creatively stuck or blocked at any point during the month, use the theme as a source of inspiration to get you moving. Feel free to focus on the theme in your creative activities for the entire month or as much as you'd like.
Using the theme is entirely optional for CED participants. Use it if it inspires you, ignore it if it doesn't. I'll be sharing posts throughout the month around the theme (among other things) to get you thinking about how to incorporate it into your life. I'd love to hear how you use the theme in your creative world.
And have fun with it!
I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red. --Alexander Calder
p.s. The art above is adapted from my piece, Red Bear, available here.
Insta-creativity
July 29th, 2011, Comments (19)
What you lookin' at, Mama?
This is the little, nearly 3 month old munchkin who has been keeping me on my toes day and night. She's pretty darn cute though.
I've been itching to find more time to create, but my arms are often full and I'm only grabbing a few moments here and there for creating. You can always find creative outlets if you're looking for them though.
For me, that has often been through instagram. A small, portable creative outlet that I carry with me via my iphone, which also helps me stay connected to the outside world, while simultaneously helping me keep track of how long it's been since I breastfed the baby last.
I've been using instagram to capture lots of sweet moments with the baby,
but also the little bits of beauty I see around the house,
while out on walks or jogs,
or while packing art up to send off to a new home.
So much fun!
p.s. I'm leah_art on Instagram if you play there too. Also, I just got a tip from @LindaUrsin that SnapBucket is a great alternative for those who don't have an iphone! Thanks, Linda!
Creative Every Day Check-In: July 25 – 31
July 25th, 2011, Comments (18)
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: Read all the details and sign up for the 2011 Creative Every Day Challenge here!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 7/25//11 - 7/31/11.
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) or flickr image 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 unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #CED2011 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for July is Blue, which you can read more about and get ideas for here.
Happy Creating!
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. - Pablo Picasso
Blue: Guest Post by Susan Reep
July 19th, 2011, Comments (6)
What an apt theme for the month! The great painter and art teacher Josef Albers said “Color is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that’s the difference!” I think the cook put more salt in this Moorish tile because it can sure jiggle your eyeballs. Some of that salt was the color blue.
While I admire those who trend on the “less” side, thinking less is more, I tend to think if some is good, more is better. I got to see lots of this amazing tile work in March on a trip to Morocco and Spain, and as a photographer, I took hundreds of photos of course – but my aim was BLUE. More BLUE! The reason was simple – my daughter wanted blue photos for her walls. Since blue has always been my favorite color, I was up for searching out BLUE.
You know how giving yourself constraints in your work can amp up the creativity? Like grabbing a handful of magazines and doing collages in your art journal, constrained by using only what you find in the magazines? Searching out BLUE sure gave me a focus for photography and it made an already thrilling trip even more exciting.
I found lots of BLUE – but what did it all mean? What is it about BLUE? It’s the color of optimism – sunny skies are blue skies. Irving Berlin wrote the classic “Blue skies, smiling at me; nothing but blue skies, do I see.” Water is blue and calm; stormy waters are grey and green and black. Blue bloods are of the upper class. First place takes the blue ribbon. Brides wear something borrowed, something blue – blue for faithfulness and loyalty. And men wear dark blue suits for power. Things that happen infrequently happen once in a blue moon. But it’s not all good, because hard times and sadness intrude in the form of the Blues. Patsy Cline is “…crazy, feeling so blue.”
Raoul Dufy, the French fauvist painter, said “Blue is the only color that maintains its own character in all its tones…it will always stay blue.” Whatever that really means, it seemed to match a mosaic detail from Gaudi’s Parc Guell in Barcelona.
The Ukrainian Cubist painter Kasimir Malevich said, “I have broken the boundary of color limits, come out into the white; beside me comrade-pilots swim in this infinity.” Taking swimming literally as in blue water, and then emerging into the white of the clouds in the blue sky gives a surrealistic meaning to this photograph of the swimming pool at the Hotel Xaluca Dades in Boumalne Dades, Morocco. To me, it makes it much more than a swimming pool. It makes it infinite with endless possibilities.
Moroccans use vibrant colors, and these blue doors on the orange building seem to have been painted simply to justify Vincent Van Gogh’s quote: “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” I don’t know what Van Gogh meant exactly, but both colors pop out with such vibrancy when used together.
This magnificent chimney from a Gaudi building in Barcelona just screamed out for the blue centerlight in this Jack Kerouac quote from On the Road: The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes, “Awww!”
Awww. You can feel the passion as Kerouac’s words speed up faster, faster, reaching, reaching ever farther, like art, color, life.
I used to be like that, speeding faster and faster, until I got a little older and started going slower, slower. Now, all I know is whether that blue centerlight pops or not, I like blue and it makes me feel good.
I made a little book matching my BLUE photographs with quotes from artists (mostly) talking about color (mostly), but I maintained artistic license to add as I wished. For example, for this blue door, I chose Temple Grandin’s statement, “A door opened and I went through it.” That’s what art is about and it’s what life is about. I just happened to go through a lot of blue doors on this trip.
:::
Susan's Background:
I grew up in Los Angeles in a family of artists. (My father, Edward Reep, is a nationally-renowned watercolorist with paintings hanging in museums across the country, as well as a World War II combat artist, with works in the Pentagon and the Smithsonian. My mother, Pat Reep, is a well-known quilter.) After living in Northern California, North Carolina, Virginia and Morocco, my husband and I settled in Bakersfield, CA. I’ve been married for 41 years and have three children and ten grandchildren. After retiring from teaching seventh-grade, I’ve been able to focus solely on my art.
I realized early-on that photography would be my medium. My training was not formal: I learned to “see” from growing up with art all around me and from listening to artists. I asked for my first camera when I was seven, and I’ve been taking pictures every since.
My focus in photography has been to find both beauty in nature and beauty in the mundane. My primary subject matter has gravitated over the years to travel and nature in all its aspects because I am a documentarian at heart.
My web site http://susanreep.com/
Blog: http://susanreep.com/blog/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/susanreep/
BLUE: Photos from Spain and Morocco: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2263540
Represented: Metro Galleries http://themetrogalleries.com/?page_id=4
Creative Every Day Check-In: July 18 – 24
July 18th, 2011, Comments (18)
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: Read all the details and sign up for the 2011 Creative Every Day Challenge here!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 7/18//11 - 7/24/11.
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) or flickr image 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 unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #CED2011 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for July is Blue, which you can read more about and get ideas for here.
Happy Creating!
"Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," As someone somewhere sings about the sky. ~Lord Byron
Painting with Blue
July 13th, 2011, Comments (17)
Last week, I got a chance to do a little painting during one of A's naps. You can see her video monitor hanging out with my paints above. I didn't have a chance to get started on the painting I sketched out, but I did have time to create this small painting, a gift for someone that is now on it's way!
I didn't take a picture of it, because it's hard to capture in a photo, but I covered the end product with Golden's glass bead gel, which when dry, makes a sparkly surface that you can see through. Very fun!
Anyone else been painting with blues?
Creative Every Day Check-In: July 11 – 17
July 11th, 2011, Comments (15)
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: Read all the details and sign up for the 2011 Creative Every Day Challenge here!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 7/11//11 - 7/17/11.
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) or flickr image 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 unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #CED2011 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for July is Blue, which you can read more about and get ideas for here.
Happy Creating!
Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight. - John Ruskin
Red, White, and BLUE
July 5th, 2011, Comments (13)
I hope those of you who celebrated the Fourth of July had a beautiful weekend!
To kick off the month of blue, here's a picture of Annabelle and I with our blue eyes.
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One of my earliest memories of the color blue is from kindergarten. The teacher asked everyone what their favorite color was and all the girls (except for myself) said pink. I defiantly said my favorite color was blue. That hasn't changed.
To me blue is open, expansive, dreamy, deep, soulful, mysterious, and magical. Clearly, I love the color blue, as even my shop is named after the color!
What associations do you have with the color blue?
Yesterday, I had my first opportunity since Annabelle came along to sketch an idea that's been in my head. Here's a quick snapshot of the sketch. A first step. A baby step! I know I'll have to do it in bits and pieces, but it's so great to have the first bit in the works!
Creative Every Day Check-In: July 4 – 10
July 4th, 2011, Comments (24)
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: Read all the details and sign up for the 2011 Creative Every Day Challenge here!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 7/4//11 - 7/10/11.
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) or flickr image 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 unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #CED2011 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for July is Blue, which you can read more about and get ideas for here. July's theme will be posted on Wednesday!
Happy Creating!
I never get tired of the blue sky - Vincent Van Gogh
