Another page of the same barn article provided me with an excellent background to zentangle on. I wanted to show you that you don't have to be limited to blank paper to start. In the original photo I noticed that there was a subtle house shape in the wall behind the three men, and I decided to make that the focus of my tangling. All the patterns I used were on page 4 of the handouts this month.
And I took another crack at zentangling my hand - using the same patterns again as I used in the handouts on page 5, but on a different background (another page from Edible Magazine - this one on sourdough bread) and dividing up the hand in a new way:
This summer, I have set myself some ambitious goals. Mostly relating to taming the wild studio. And even though I've promised myself I'm not signing up for any *extra* art classes (oh, it's SO hard not to sign up for summer art courses!) I'll still be keeping creative over the summer in my own small ways.
Firstly, I've challenged myself to do the Index Card a Day Project that Tammy Garcia runs through her website Daisy Yellow. The project runs from June 1 to July 31, so we're about halfway through already and I'm already liking some of what I've created. The goal is to create an easy, small piece of art every day using her provided prompts (or not). The materials shouldn't be precious (hence index cards) and the goal is experimentation without expectation. I'm going "old school collage" on this project - getting back to my roots. I've found that limiting something seems to produce interesting results - like forcing a flower, maybe? - so I'm limiting myself to a few magazines for visual resources and combining the prompt with the headline of a quirky blog a found a few weeks ago while researching something else. Here are some of the fun index cards I've created so far this summer:
If an index card a day is too daunting, she has ideas, too:
- Art Journalling 101 - a huge collection of Tammy's best-loved blog posts about getting started and continuing to be creative in your journal. Seriously, you could spend all summer right on her page and never need me again. I've found her freedom with colour, pattern and play really has helped me lighten up on my own expectations of myself and my journal pages.
- Muse30 - Creative prompts to get you actually working on your journal pages. Start them any time, go as fast or slow as you want.
- Feel like a video might help? Yep - she's got some of those, too.
The next thing I'm doing over the summer is to continue my monthly art meetups with my Artist Trading Card Group. Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) are small works of art that artists make and trade with each other one for one. They're the size of hockey cards or baseball cards (2.5" x 3.5") and can be made from any material at all. Over the 19 years that our group has been meeting, we've morphed into a proper little creative family and have extended our activities on meeting days to sharing more than just ATCs. There is the inevitable sharing of ideas and stories, but we also have a sharing table where people share art materials with each other, and occasionally we even share cookies and other goodies. Our meetings are from noon till 4 pm on the third Sunday each month at Boundary Rd (just below Kingsway), and you are more than welcome to join us if you like.
Our meetings this summer are July 21st, and August 18th. If you want to know more about making ATCs to trade let me know, but you are most welcome to come even if you don't have ATCs the first time - I guarantee you will go home with some! Our little group is very generous and we love newbies. Contact me if you want more details.
One of the things I like to do while I'm creating art at home is to listen to podcasts. Here are a few of my favourites ...
- 99% Invisible - general fascinating stuff I usually don't know anything about. Educational and really puts me the creative zone while I listen.
- The Science of Happiness - My new favourite podcast for living a happier life. A project of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, these short 15-20 minute podcasts are perfect little ear morsels. In each episode, a Happiness Guinea Pig will road test a method for increasing their happiness and report back to the host, who then follows up with a brief chat with a scientist or psychologist about the method and its effects on the human brain, body or heart. They have a ton of other fun things at the Greater Good Science Center, too - like a new happiness calendar each month, quizzes, articles and resources for investigating your happier life. I'm leery of self-help/happiness podcasts because they can so easily blur into feel-good nonsense or instruct you to purchase products or classes in order to achieve happiness by someone else's definition. I road-tested multiple episodes of this podcast for sensibility and affordability - it gets full marks from me.
- Art for Your Ear - by The Jealous Curator. Every episode she talks to an artist about the why and the how of their journey to become an artist. I like to listen for the things I have in common with them - not as an artist, per se - but as a human. For me, art is just another way to solve the problem of disconnection and Danielle's interviews are all about connection - connection of the artist with their purpose and their practice, and connection with other humans. Danielle Krysa is a local (attended Emily Carr) and she's turned her love of knowing more about art (and people) into fascinating everyday conversations with artists from all over. She has a knack of freeing people up to her as if they were old friends, and I've always come away from one of her interviews having learned something new. Even if the art isn't to my taste - the journey to it usually is. I freely admit to binge listening this podcast.
- Radiolab - I first heard this podcast while shopping. You know how some stores have muzak? Well at The Regional Assembly of Text on Main Street, they were playing this podcast. I was so stunned I sat down and listened to the whole episode and I haven't stopped listening to it since. Always something interesting, usually something I knew nothing about.
- No Such Thing as a Fish - A group of four researchers for an English comedy/trivia TV game show share their "favourite fact of the week" with each other. Very English, sometimes slightly rude, always entertaining. Nothing to do with art or happiness, but sometimes it's just good to have a great laugh while you're creating.
Another thing I'll be doing over the summer is working on digital art. I don't talk about it much, but I'm part of a digital design team for Tangie Baxter & Co. I met Tangie about 10 years ago and loved all her journaling supplies.
She was creating grungy, scratchy, vintagy collage sheets that appealed to my love of how the history and wear and tear on images and documents make them more interesting for art journal pages. I became a devoted customer and after a few years she asked me if I'd like to work with her digital supplies as well, and I jumped right in. So every month for the past few years, I've been creating digital art to contribute to her online classrooms. I thought it would be fun to end of this last blog post of the summer with something I made digitally, and I hope you find a way to bloom over the summer.
See you all again in September ...
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