My friend Lyric Kinard has a new product out called Start Your Art: 48 Warm Up Exercises to Jumpstart Your Art. It’s a beautiful pack of cards with fun exercises designed to get your creativity revved up. You can choose a card and do the exercise yourself, or you can do it with a friend, or a big group.
Lyric encourages us to “make bad art” (by that, she means art thrown together quickly, without the pressure of perfection, that is about “exploring, playing and learning.” ) The directions include suggestions on playing with a group, and on your own.
I chose this card, “Click and Cut” because I love to take photos, and I love texture and pattern. But I really don’t love black and white, and I don’t love collage. (I’m more about bright, saturated color, precision and things that are tedious and take a very long time to do.) So I figured this would take me out of my comfort zone.
I started by taking digital photos (on my iPhone) of things around my house that had a lot of texture or pattern. It was raining, so I didn't go outside, except for the cabbage/kale photo. Here are just a few of them:
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| Basket made from electrical wire from South Africa |
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| Birch bark trash basket |
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| Decorative cabbage/kale |
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| Plastic lobster |
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| Decorative balls made from paper |
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| Sea urchin |
I pulled them all into my computer, then into Photoshop, and converted them to black and white, and changed the brightness and contrast to make them more interesting. In some cases, I zoomed in on parts of the photos to change the scale. Then I printed them out and started cutting. My idea was to make a piece with a beetle theme.
I forced myself to cut pieces freehand, with out a pattern, and to work quickly.
I mixed up some Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue with a bit of water, and brushed the pieces down onto white paper with this glue mixture.
Here’s my final composition. I was surprised that it came out as well as it did!
1. It’s fun, and healthy, to try something new.
2. Stepping out of your comfort zone doesn't have to be painful.
3. Using a different technique can inform your primary technique, helping you to think about things in a slightly different way.
4. I still love color. I’m going to try adding color on top, either with transparent water color, or with tissue paper, or colored pencils.
5. I still love my primary medium (fabric). The whole time I was doing this, I kept thinking, “Oh, I wish these pieces were fabric!” It would be fun to take this to the next level, and do it in fabric while attempting to replicate the look of this collaged piece.
You can get your own pack of Start Your Art cards here:
Why not give this Start Your Art exercise a try? If you do, please share your results on this Facebook page:
GIVE-AWAY!
Here’s a chance to win Start Your Art for yourself and for an art teacher! Lyric is donating a digital deck to the winner, and physical pack of cards to the art teacher of your choice. How cool is that? Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you’d like to win. Please note that all comments are moderated to filter out spam and links to porn and other unpleasantness, so they won’t show up right away. I'll pull one name at random on Nov. 22 (after I finish baking my pies for Thanksgiving). Make sure you include a way to get in touch, or that you check back on Nov. 23 to see if you’ve won! UPDATE: We have a winner! Ma Rhoby has won a pack of cards and a pack for the art teacher of her choice.
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