Doodles Unleashed. Lesson 1

I am doing a free online art class taught by Traci Bautista and sponsored by Strathmore. Making time to make art is something that I want to do more this year. I have Traci's book Collage Unleashed which is great and also have taken an in-person art workshop with her. She is the first mixed media artist that I really started following.

The class is called Doodles Unleashed and here is the finished artwork from the first lesson.

I think you can still sign up for the free online art workshop and there are also a couple more to try if you want to learn something new (and why not?)

Here's to making lots of art and having fun creating it in 2012. Happy New Year!

What kinds of things do you want to do more of this year?

Pencil shavings art

A while back I got a bunch of Prismacolor colored pencils and sharpened them all, resulting in a large pile of very colorful pencil shavings. It was so pretty I took a picture of it (several pictures, actually with the shavings in different configurations). After seeing this art, I wish I had kept some of it in one of the cute little glass jars I have. Guess I can always sharpen more pencils...

This reminds me of the little game that I had when I was little - Wooly Willy where you had a board with a printed face and a magnetic 'pencil' which would pick up small black metal shavings that you arrange on the printed face to make eyebrows, beards, mustaches, etc.

Speaking of Wooly Willy, here are some instructions on how to make your own Wooly Willy table using an Ikea Lack table and Ribba frame (both pretty inexpensive). You could obviously change the image from the bald-headed man to anything else that would be fitting - how about a fashion doll and you use the magnetic shavings to design clothing on her?

See more of the pencil shaving portraits on Design Boom.

Street painting festival

The Temecula Street Painting Festival is held in Old Town Temecula every June. We have been going for the past four years as spectators, enjoying watching the artists at work. This year I participated in the event and painted one of my "dolls" with a quote that I love: the eARTh without "ART" is just "eh".

It was a great day. Lots of fun and I especially loved that many friends came by to say hi, and a few even stayed to help!

I will post more about the actual process in a followup post when I am not on my iPad.

Have you ever been to a street painting festival or participated in any kind of art event?

Good Bot, Bad Bot

I'm a fan of Sharpies, especially nice pointy new juicy ones! I'm saving this idea for a rainy day - this artist named Gary Hirsch makes bots using oil-based paint Sharpie markers. They are cute! And I'm a fan of robots too - simply because they are easy to draw or doodle and you can use your imagination and create them any way you want - just like Gary has done! Read all about Gary and his art on the Sharpie blog:
Good Bot, Bad Bot

"Nothing is original..." quote

This is so true...I am doing an online workshop by Traci Bautista and this week we are working on our inspiration notebook. I've been making these since high school where my art teacher called them "reference books".  I spent half an hour this morning collecting things that inspire me from a stack of fashion magazines and taping them into a notebook. Part of the creative process...here's the quote:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photos, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

- Jim Jarmusch
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