Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Creating Art Beautifully....

So the goal of the Big Hearts Walking Play Date was not to create beautiful art. The goal was to create art beautifully. And that is what we accomplished !

I planned out the activities for our afternoon together, combining ideas I got from the wonderful Sarah Whitmire's Soul Journal exercises, from Sarah Ahearn's workshop at Squam "Text and Images", a bit of the incredible Judy Wise's Play Book class fun, and a good strong dose of my own play time ideas and great teacher organizational skills. I think it turned out well, especially as I made it a priority to listen to all the participants and to gauge when things needed to change or adapt to the flow.

Our first activity was a treasure hunt in a magazine. We all had the task of looking for a few items such as words that popped out at us, sets of eyes, a "good" face, and a body positioned in an interesting pose.

The treasures that we found would be built on in the next activities. For example, the posed figure was to become a mask or a stencil when carefully cut out like the one above that I did.

The treasure hunt complete, we moved on to creating a collaborative page in our journals. Each of us started with painting one page in our favorite color. Then prompted by a series of cards I had created, we would pass our journal to the person to our right and do the action that the prompt suggested. The prompts had things like add the date to your page, add some circles, finger paint in one section, do a doodle in one section, add a collage element, add some words, and so on...

After we all complete the prompt, we passed our journal to the next person, and continued until we had our own journals back - so five elements had been added to the page when the circle was complete.

Here are our pages after that collaborative prompt activity was completed...

Kriss's page - collage element added by me - a doodle from my book

Gretchen's page - cool numbers for the date, right ?

Colleen's page - funky scribble writing at the bottom !

Jill's page - don't you love that finger painted orange corner ?

Corrine's page - love the fuchsia on the light blue...

Kim's page - love the words "warm, cozy, sunny" when it was snowing outside !

I think it was how we were feeling inside !

At this point, we decided as a group to work on either finishing these pages in our own way or on starting a new page and keeping the collaborative page for finishing up at a later date. I had a second set of prompts that were geared towards adding things to our own pages. Some of us used these to keep the flow going. Other people just felt like doodling on backgrounds they had in their journals already. And others used the "treasures" they had gathered from the first activity to create new pages.

The rest of our time was just spent chatting, playing in our journal, sharing stories, pausing to show tools or techniques that we used and basically enjoying the time and the process. What a treat to not worry about end results and just play in a safe, fun environment with supportive chickies all around you !

We asked Jackie, the owner at Talk Paper Scissors, to take photos of our gang.

Colleen had brought along her new latest sweet gizmo, A PoGo Polaroid Printer, which prints shots the size of a business card when hooked up to a camera. Above is the shot of us that we each got a little copy of right on the spot !

This is where my page ended up after my play time...


It still has work to be done on it but I was happy with where it is going...


You can see where I used the mask of the funky figure to create the shape in my journal. I used a make-up sponge and fushia paint around the edges of the figure. I them drew in the lines with india ink.

Kind of funny, isn't it, that a group of artists come together and the resulting art work becomes almost secondary ? But as I said, the main goal of us getting together was to be in the moment, enjoy the process and take that special time out of our often way too busy lives just to be creative.

Ahhhh, what can I say...it was so very very good for the soul in so very very many ways...

And this filled-up Queen already has the seeds of the next one germinating in her head....

Happy Tuesday, Beautiful Ones !

13 comments:

BJ Lantz said...

How very fun this looked! I was in both of those classes @ Squam with you and they were indeed also engaging on a different level from the art making, so I imagine was your get-together! Wish I coulda been there!

BJ Lantz said...

How very fun this looked! I was in both of those classes @ Squam with you and they were indeed also engaging on a different level from the art making, so I imagine was your get-together! Wish I coulda been there!

Anne said...

Hi, Kim! This looks like such fun! I love how different and unique each journal page turned out! And the prompts all sound fairly easy to do. Wow! What a terrific day! :-)

beth said...

too much fabulous fun !!

and that little printer...I have one, too and took it to squam with me last year :)

Jennifer said...

These look awesome! I loved going to things like this when I was an art therapy student. I really love the prompts...I could imagine that you'd be wonderful at that...it's such a gift.

Your page in progress in amazing as well. I sure hope that one day you make a calendar and a book of your art. Your work is breathtaking...it speaks volumes to and for other people's souls, Kim. I can't tell you how much I enjoy every piece you show...down to the inky lines, dots, white accents, painting with a makeup sponge...all amazing and soul stirring!!

Kate Robertson said...

Kim,

What a nice fun low key way to get together. I like the ideas you did, I may have to try the techniques soon.

I like your work in progress that image has a sassy pose just like I would expect my Queen to have. What fun.

It would be great if you could post all the finished pages of your friends in a future post.

Art on my Queen...

Kate

Sueann said...

What a great play date you all had. The journals turned out awesome. Love the colors...so bright and vibrant.
Hugs
SueAnn

Snap said...

What a wonderful play date! Keeps us young and in love! :D :D :D

jgr said...

HI Kim,
It sounds like you all had a blast, and I love the pages everyone came up with!!

The Bodhi Chicklet said...

What an amazing time, terrific art that was created. Great ideas as a group to work in each others journals. You're one smart biscuite!

Sherry said...

Create art beautifully. 'nuff said!!!

And you did -- passing the books so each person added to all the books...shared art, shared time, shared laughter, shared photographs.

I eagerly await whatever the Queen is now cooking up in the imaginative brain!!! xoxoxox

MB Shaw said...

What a sweet and perfect day you created! YUM. And it looks like that is my Gretchen (I just say 'my' because she was one of my roomies at Squam and I adore her). I had no idea you were buddies. You have a wonderful art group, lucky girls!!
xoxo

Anonymous said...

Kim you make my heart feel warm and full of happiness.
Thank you for a special time!!
Love, Hugs and Smiles~ Jill
nalettejm@yahoo.com