I’ve been intrigued by gallery walls lately, and have started a totally unplanned and haphazard one on our living room wall.
I love the idea of having lots of simple sketches and doodles, either as a whole wall, or interspersed throughout other art styles.
What if I had same-sized paper, ready with matched frames and/or matting, and asked friends to draw things for me? (either the same item, or random items – their choice, or pulled from a jar. Umbrella, rubber ducky, bicycle, cat)
I’m having a lot of fun buying thrift store frames, shadowboxes, and mirrors, and using them for artsy stuff.
Sometimes I wind up frustrated that none of the things are “speaking to me,” which can result in me semi-accidentally stocking up on them even though I have plenty left. Buuut … the upside of this is that then I can have a crafts night and my friends can use the extra frames?
But sometimes, a frame or mirror will really speak to me to do something to it. Last week I had three art nights where I got to play around with either a hot glue gun or paints. I only burned my fingers a few dozen times, and only broke the glass I was painting on once, but it all turned out okay!
Things I want to get in the habit of:
Figure out – anything interesting to do with old keys? (Put in jar at least …)
Bring in copies of your favorite children’s books – universally iconic, or iconic just to you – and trace or sketch characters from them into scenes from your own life. This could be a two-parter, with the first being creating a scene from your world (could be a photo, although I think a drawing in a similar style to the character is particularly nice), and the second being adding a character you love. Another option is scanning and printing pages from these books, so you can cut and paste with them.
There could also be additional prompts, such as:
What does this character means to you?
How can this character help you in your everyday life?
What would this character be doing in your world? What would they be like?
or something entirely unrelated.
Books I’d love to use:
Where the Wild Things Are
Goodnight Moon
The Runaway Rabbit
Olga da Polga
Alice & Wonderland (the pen & ink drawings)
Calvin & Hobbes
Prep:
1: Easy prep — look up images online
2: Medium — bring books
3: More—make copies of pages
(Inspired by http://twistedsifter.com/2014/07/thrift-store-painting-remixes-by-david-irvine/)
This website looks pretty great : http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/adding-monsters-to-thrift-store-paintings/
Another option is to add monsters to an old painting that the painster-craftser doesn’t like anymore and wants to reinvent.
Prep: Everyone needs a thrift store painting, or an old artwork they don’t want.
lightbox
frame-making (twigs? etc?)
stained glass
find an image in a subset that makes you feel things — write about it
dice game to come up with prompts – how does this work? How can we randomize it and make the prompts fun? Random noun generator? Random feeling generator?
stationary / letterwriting – blank cardstock, watercolor paper cut down to square letter size to draw little image in,
journal-making
paint on glass in frame
found items / LED lights on mirror
shadowbox for passports, etc.
Osmo – figure out how to use, set up, fix ipad
LIX pen ? (3D pen … )
Print or sketch images like this : https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t34.0-12/13141135_10206314966578133_1251695953_n.jpg?oh=45c4978fc6f10a6b704610eb477d20f0&oe=572A5E85
Gallery wall of pictures I’ve collected/drawn (link to thing about ad cards that they’ve collected? postcard quilt thing / inspiration board)
Paintsy Craftsy! 