You're receiving this on February 2nd (happy Groundhog Day), but I'm writing it on what feels like January 67th. Has ever a January January-ed more? It is gray upon gray upon gray in New York.
I skipped last week’s newsletter because I had a sick kid home all week, and I couldn’t get my life together. I sort of feel like I won’t be able to get my life together until April, but I’m trying. My job is to motivate you to do something creative today, but I really could have used my own cheerleader this week.
When I’m really struggling to access my creative side, I find looking at other artists’ work tends to help - sometimes online but especially in person at a museum or gallery. At a certain point when I’m walking around a gallery, I find myself anxious to get home to my camera or paints. Not to copy anything I’m seeing in the museum, but to feel that same connection of making, of creating, with the artists whose work I’m viewing.
Spring is slowly creeping toward us and it’s time to open some windows, shake out the cobwebs, and make a real space for creativity in our lives this year. It’s field trip time. This month I want you to go view some art in person and see if it helps you access your creative side. You don’t need to go to a big art museum - a gallery displaying work from local artists is just fine. (Actually a gallery is probably even better because you’re supporting your local arts scene.) Take your kids or go alone. Really look at the artwork, don’t just breeze through. Afterwards see how quickly you want to run home and make some art yourself.
If you fall in love with a new artist on your field trip, I’d love to hear about it. Let me know which gallery or museum you visited in the comments, and what type of art you found yourself drawn to on your outing. And if this field trip has the opposite effect and makes you not want to work on your own creative ventures because you don’t feel good enough, I want to hear about that too. Let’s chat and see if we can turn that feeling around.
Art Prompt #3
My supplies: Marbles, Winsor & Newton ink, Apple Barrel acrylic craft paint, plastic cups and spoons, watercolor, watercolor paper, a tray with sides (like a baking sheet) that you don’t mind getting paint on, painter’s tape
Alternative supplies: If you don’t have marbles, anything with wheels would probably work - like a toy car. Basically anything that can roll around that you’re ok with getting paint on. Black paint will work if you don’t have ink. I did a bunch of these, and I used regular printer paper for the first couple while I was figuring out the process and it worked fine as long as it didn’t get too wet, so watercolor paper is not required.
The Prompt: We are getting really messy today and painting with marbles. Take your paper and tape it to the tray. Put your ink or acrylic paint in a cup and put your marbles in the cup, so they get covered in paint. (I added a drop or two of water to the acrylic paint so it rolled a little more smoothly. If you have ink, you don’t need to water it down.) Scoop out the marbles with a spoon and put them on the edge of the tray. Pick up the tray and roll it around - see the designs your marble makes. When it starts to run out of color, toss it back in the ink/paint for a moment. Try and make specific shapes or just let the marble roll around and see what happens.
This was SO much fun and just what I needed to shake myself out of the winter doldrums a little. I probably made 10 of these paintings and they all looked so different. The last one looked like trees in a forest to me, so after the ink dried, I got my watercolors and painted some of the lines brown to look like tree trunks and added leaves at the top of the page. What shapes jump out at you? Use your watercolors to paint in some of the gaps. I felt like a lot of my abstract swirls could have been turned into flowers or plants.
Final Thoughts
As always, I want to see your artwork! Whether you try this prompt or any of the previous ones, feel free to send them my way. I’m so proud of you for making time to be creative each week. Everytime I see something one of you has created, it makes me feel like my heart’s going to explode.
Stay warm this week. Hopefully the groundhog sends us an early spring.
xo
Katie Jane