Picking three random words out of my grab bag of artist prompt words has been a trial. (See the idea here.)This past week, I picked Pencil Drawings, Cats, and Spaghetti from my word salad grab bag. I thought this was going to be easy. For warm-ups, I pulled out one of my stubby pieces of graphite and on newsprint, I did the obvious. Rough sketches, nothing to look at, but I just needed to get them out of the way.
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While getting into my art prompts for the week, I was reminded of a drawing I did back in high school…or was it college? In any case, it was an art class where the teacher had us doing a progression of something that morphs into something else.
Continue readingThe Grab Bag of Artist Prompts for this past week were: Rabbit, Circles and Beach Glass. This had to be my favorite week so far. Rabbits! Who doesn’t love fuzzy little bun buns? In each of these random word pic events, there is always one word that seems to be the kicker, the odd ball out, the pain. This week the anti-magic piece was the beach glass. I have a bunch of beach glass, and it’s frosted and pretty – no problem. However, beach glass is at the beach, bunnies are in the woods, so that was a block. Circles and rabbits make sense, but add in beach glass and we’ve got problems.
Rabbit, Circles and Beach
Continue readingOne of the biggest things I’m learning from all these art games is that I need to warm up. Just like in a figure drawing session, where the model changes positions every ten, twenty, and thirty seconds. However, even after so many sketches for this week’s project, I think I’ve exhausted the possibilities. You can thank me later for not posting the ten other drawings and stories that led up to this post!
It has also been like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. The random words from the bag are so incongruous that even when I come up with something, that made a little bit of sense, it hasn’t resulted in great art. Basically, it is a whole bunch of warm up exercises. Fun, but not great art.
This week’s random prompt words were Blueberry, Willow Tree, and Crayon.
Read more: Week #3 of Creativity GymnasticsThe Me Tree
“Momma?” asked the little girl. “What happens if you plant a crayon and a blueberry?”
“I guess you get a crayon tree growing out of the blueberry,” answered Momma.
“So what happens if you plant a blueberry and a tree and crayons?”
“You get a blueberry tree made out of crayons.”
The little girl thought for a second and then asked Momma “….And what happens if you plant…
“Willow, what are you getting at?
“I’m trying to get at a blueberry, crayon, Me tree.”
“A me tree?” asked the mother.
“Yes, a tree – a tree with my name Willow, but a tree.” The little girl gave a wide happy grin at her mother.
“I guess you get crayons that grow a blueberry, with willow tree sprouting from it?”
“Maybe,” thought Willow, “you get a crayon-colored Me Tree with a blueberry sun!”
And so we come to the end of week #3. Did that make any sense at all? It was a tough one.
I’ve already picked my random words. Ready? (I’m not.) Beach Glass, Rabbit, Circles
Once again, the combination of words picked from my pile of artist prompts was challenging. The words were: Salt, Espresso, and Photography. I really love each of these separately. I had no idea how I would put them together. This really was going to take some creative gymnastics!
First, I researched the use of the word ‘salt.’ It’s everywhere from restaurants to businesses, and contained in volumes of history. The question was, how to put those three prompts together into something fun and creative.
Continue readingHopefully this is going to be a weekly event of artist prompts. Play along with me? In my first blog entry (Snagging the Muse, An Artist’s Prompt), I wrote about picking slips of paper from a bag full of likes and interests. Here are my three picks from week one: Sweaters, Fountain Pens and Fairytales. Wow – random, huh? Several stories came to mind, but the one I wrote here seems to fit all three words the best. This story could have been more involved, but I thought I’d go with the abbreviated version.
What words did you pick and what did you create? Here’s mine:
Continue readingI am an artist, or used to be. Ideas exploded from my crazy head, like an erupting volcano. The lava spilled everywhere taking form as wood sculpting, watercolor paintings, oil paintings, and embroidery mixed with pieces of rust or embroidery mixed with watercolors. Never needed artist prompts. When my kids were little I taught myself how to play the piano, so that I could sing and play lullaby’s to them at night. It’s a crazy list of efforts that’s had twists and turns. I also wrote and illustrated five children’s books (self-published) all while working as a makeup artist in the film and tv business for 45 years.