Entries Tagged as: play
Body Shadows In Progress
January 7th, 2010, Comments (12)
So, yesterday I shared a video of me using body shadows to trace shapes on a piece of paper and today I began playing with paint and gel medium in those shapes. I had to stop at one point when I managed to splatter purple paint all over myself. Doh! I've been letting it sit like this and noticing what I see in it now. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a whale shape at one point. But when I turned it around, that same shape looked just like a bird's head.
Where's this going? I don't know! It might go nowhere at all. But I enjoy playing in this way, letting things happen, and then looking to see what comes up as I work. It's a fun, intuitive process that leads to interesting things that I wouldn't necessarily come up with if I planned it all out. I'll keep you updated as it progresses.
And be sure to check in tomorrow for an interview with the fantabulous Jamie Ridler about creativity and the body!
Chairs in a Row
November 29th, 2009, Comments (24)
I traced the silhouette of this woman onto rice paper last night, but today I came back to it and traced a series of chairs, which got me all excited. Again, I collaged and painted on a 6"x6" clayboard surface, using bits from my collection, things I intuitively grabbed that seemed right in the moment. One scrap looked like it was the shape in the house, so I played with that. I had a piece of rice paper cut in the shape of a eucalyptus that I'd written on months ago, but not used in anything. It seemed like the right time to use it here. Stamps and stamped images of ferns came into play as well. Then I lay the rice paper image over it, using a soft gel medium to bring it together. I love the translucent quality of the rice paper and the way the drawings sit on top of it. I've always been a fan of layers, the way it mimics how layered things are in real life.
I'm so enjoying the rice paper at the moment. I love when a material thrills me and I know I'll be playing with it for awhile until the next medium makes me giddy. It's a good place to be, feeling the joy of materials, feeling in the flow.
I was feeling a big sluggish the last week, although I kept plodding through. Flow in creativity comes in cycles for me and I've come to accept that. Sometimes a down period means I do other things like reading or research, re-stocking the well as Julia Cameron puts it in The Artist's Way. And other times, like during Art Every Day Month, I keep plodding through, knowing that the spark will fire again, if I just keep patiently putting mark to paper. Often times, I don't think the spark has returned to me, until I've already begun, like last night, which makes me glad for those times when I kept plodding through. But other times, a break feels necessary. Neither way is wrong or right. Knowing that both ways of returning to my work can be fruitful helps me come back without judging myself in the process.
What helps you come back to your creativity after a slow period? Are there any sparks happening right now for you?
Poppy Rain
November 28th, 2009, Comments (16)
The funny thing is, I didn't feel much like making art when I got home. I was tired from a full day of traveling and from a very long week, but once again, I'm so glad I did sit down to create.
I had so much fun and things were just flowing as I played intuitively with collage, rice paper, ink, colored pencil, and paint on this 6"x6" mixed-media piece. I used a piece of clayboard as my surface (which is great for collage) and began with scraps I had handy. I randomly had the idea to trace a silhouette of a woman from an Anthropologie catalog onto rice paper along with some circles and then collage them over the collage I'd started on the clayboard. I moved things about, creating this image I was pleased with. Then I came back to it later and created the clouds with Inktense water soluble colored pencils.
I love the way it came together and how it fits my mood although I couldn't explain to you why. I think it says it visually and that's enough for me at the moment.
So glad to be home. So much to catch up on!
Inkblots: Blue-haired Sisters
November 27th, 2009, Comments (7)
Just got back from an afternoon in Manhattan. So inspiring! More to share when I get home, but for now, my art of the day, a playful inkblot.
Hope you all have a fabulously creative weekend!
Traveling Inkblots
November 26th, 2009, Comments (8)
Super busy here in New York, so I brought along a sketchbook with some inkblots in it to play with for my Art Every Day while I'm away. Here's what I did today. Love how portable these are! I'm going to keep trying to post while I'm away, but I don't have much access to the internet, so I may have to share what I've been up to each day in batches. We shall see.
If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you've all had a wonderful holiday. I'm stuffed and happy to be with family. Thank you again for all your sweet words about my Grandma. Your support was so helpful.
Sketches and Doodles
November 23rd, 2009, Comments (20)
Yesterday and today were consumed with working on a slideshow/movie for my Grandmother's wake tomorrow. Such a time consuming process, all the scanning and cropping and editing. But sorting through the old photos was fun. The picture above is of my Grandma and I. You can see she's working on a blanket in it. She was an amazing knitter and knit me everything from the coolest Christmas stocking you've ever seen, to beautiful sweaters (my favorite was blue with fuzzy white cats on it), to doll clothes.
My Grandma did have a beautiful life filled with 5 children and 15 grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren and a long, happy marraige. It was nice to go through these memories, remembering the better times before she got ill.
I'm exhausted, but I did manage to do a few little doodles in my moleskine-like sketchbook with watercolor pencils. They were fun to do and I appreciated the time to be playful.
Inkblots
November 20th, 2009, Comments (32)
Today I got to meet with the super sweet Gretchen Wegner, who was in town for a conference. I took her to a nearby art supply store to pick up some goodies and show her some non-intimidating art supplies to play with. One of the things I shared was these little moleskine-like sketchbooks and Golden fluid acrylics, two things that I love to use when making inkblots. I simply squirt some paint on one page, mush it around, then close the sketchbook to make my inkblot. I usually do a bunch at once, then keep the book open so the pages can dry. Later, I come back and see what images I can find in the inkblots or just play with them until an image appears using pens and colored pencils. Below you can see what the above inkblot looked like when I started to draw on it.
A few people have mentioned feeling stressed by keeping up with the challenge. I totally understand, it is challenging, but you're all doing so great! I really want to make this a low-pressure and no-guilt experience, but I know that most of the guilt/stress comes from the pressure we put on ourselves. So I'll say this: if you need to take a break and come back, do that! Or if you need to do something lighter and easier for a few days, something like these inkblots or doodling, do that. Mix it up and make it fun for yourself. Mixing it up makes it easier to stay with it and the variety will inspire you too! Here are some more inkblots I played with today.
Gray Skies
November 19th, 2009, Comments (41)
Today, in an attempt to clear up some majorly clogged ears, I took a decongestant and now I'm totally fuzzy headed and my ears are still clogged. Oy! lol. Perhaps the fuzzy headedness is where the gray came from today or perhaps it's the gray weather. I took a walk outside before I painted and the sky seemed so heavy with grayness.
I sat down with watercolor paper and a bottle of ink and began to play. I love dropping ink and drawing into little puddles of water on paper. The way the ink flows suggests shapes (today the trees, bird, and clouds.) It was relaxing.
Now, I'm off to take a hot shower, in another attempt to clear up my sinuses, before meeting up with some friends I met doing the Mondo Beyondo class this fall. We're to sit around, eat soup, and read to each other. How lovely is that? I only hope I'll be able to hear them. 
Interview with Chris Zydel about Intuitive Painting
November 18th, 2009, Comments (7)
I'm so excited to be able to share this interview with the fabulous Chris Zydel. Chris is an artist, writer, teacher of Intuitive Painting, and has so many insightful things to share about the process of creating from your intuition.
The recording is about 17 minutes long. You may also right-click (or ctrl-click on a Mac) to save this interview to your computer to listen to later. Perhaps you can listen in while you work on your art for the day today!
Chris is leading a 6 day Intuitive Painting Retreat in Northern California, January 16th - 22nd, 2010, which sounds simply amazing. You can find out all about the retreat here. You can learn more about Chris and her work on her website, Creative Juices Arts. Chris also has a blog and is on Twitter too!
Dragonfly Key, Work-In-Progress
November 10th, 2009, Comments (24)
Today was a difficult one, and once again, making art was like therapy for me, helping me feel more grounded. Difficult days are no fun, but having Art Every Day Month to prompt me into doing art even when I'm having a tough day, has been a great lesson in how healing art-making can be.
I started out just playing with paint, laying down layers, drawing, covering things up, turning the paper this way and that. Most of the time I was working on it, it was horizontal, but at the very end, when I thought it was going nowhere and I'd just stop for the day, I turned it on its side and saw a figure. The dragonfly was already there, but it looked like the figure was using the dragonfly like a key. The dragonfly had appeared earlier and I'd almost covered it up because I thought it looked odd, this big dragonfly in the middle of a gold circle, but when the figure appeared, she knew just what do with the dragonfly. I love when things flow together like that.
I say this is a work in progress because it felt like it was time to stop for today, to let it breathe. I like that the figure is ghostly. I'm not sure if this piece will go any further or where it will go or if I'll just put a few finishing touches on it. But I know it was time to stop. (It can be tricky to know when to stop sometimes, but today I knew.) I need some time to reflect on it and sit with it. Do I want to keep the ruffled edge? Do I want a keyhole somewhere? Do I want to bring out the other dragonfly that's already there? Do I leave it alone? But there's no rush. I can let this sit and carry on with other art until I know what the next step is.
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