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Thursday, June 9, 2011

artistically challenged

I used to feel artistically challenged - or to put it more bluntly, BAD AT ART.
These days I feel challenged artistically. Discovering all the really cool artists who post prompts and challenges has made an enormous difference in my life. I love a good challenge. It's one thing to go into the studio and mess around. I like that fine, but it's a little aimless, and I find myself on the laptop instead. But with the tiniest suggestion of direction, I'm off and running. (and clearly this is how a lot of us work or there wouldn't be so many great prompts out there!)

Here are my responses to some of Daisy Yellow's most recent Creative experiments. I've done 4 of the 6 challenges. You'll have to click through to see the full text of the experiments on her blog.

CAFFEINE:
This is only the second water color sketch I've ever done. I just bought Jane LaFazio's video "From Art to Art Journaling" from Cloth, Paper, Scissors and really loved it. I will edit out all of my own critical comments about this piece because
1. I completed the challenge.
2. I love my coffee cup SO MUCH and
3. my next few water color sketches made me pretty happy


MICRO:

The cactus knew it was time to cut the apron strings. Her babies were grown up now, they no longer needed her to sing them to sleep. It’s not like she hadn’t tried to cultivate their independence, but she still found herself calling out “don’t forget your scarf” as they ran for the bus. At night she would lie awake wondering if anyone would love them they way she did. They were so darn prickly, that they often drove others away. Still, she knew in her heart it was time to let go. She would tear off the band-aid, sever the cord, and hope for the best. And she would keep her stapler in her back pocket just in case.

(Ok, can I just tell you how much I loved that last challenge? I'm thinking of doing something similar with the kids at summer camp. This was so fun to write and put SO many more good ideas in my head.)


MAIL:

This was the easiest one because I already own "Good Mail Day" and have been working on mail art for about a month already. Is that cheating if I had already completed the challenge before it was posted? I say NO because I was totally inspired by that book and made sure to send/photograph my mail this week.


PETALS:
This was the hardest one! If you know me (oh wait, no one I know reads my blog) you know I have the gift of falling asleep within moments of laying down. In fact, I'm just as likely to fall asleep sitting or even standing. So I think I got as far as FOUR petals before falling asleep, and my memory of those four is pretty sketchy, but involved fairly conventional images such as a rose held in the teeth while doing the tango.


Other challenges I've been enjoying or plan to enjoy:

and of course:

What challenges or prompts do YOU recommend?

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