Sunday Sketches - and drawing as therapy

This is pretty interesting - it showed up in my inbox. The article relates 'the healing power of drawing'.

"When we learn that we have a serious illness, we may be overwhelmed with emotion and barely able to think straight. Bernie Siegel, MD, who wrote Love, Medicine & Miracles, a groundbreaking book on the power of attitude and outlook on healing, suggests a strategy that can help us cope. He says that we should get out our crayons and markers and draw—yes, draw. This can help relieve our fears and anxiety—and may even give us insight into feelings we are not consciously aware of."

The rest of the article shows things that one might analyze when looking at art through the prism of health.

And now, for Sunday Sketches, I submit some freeform sketches, of the type that would lend themselves to some sort of therapeutic analysis due to the meditative state through which they were sketched.

I will strive to get to as many participants I can btw late afternoon sometime tomorrow and Monday- and encourage all to do the same! Always great creativity on display in this 2nd year anniversary they are celebrating.

As an aside, I have a question re. comments features on Blogger -

I see that some blogs have the capacity to respond directly to a commenter. My blog does not seem to have that. Is there a workaround? Any insights appreciated!

Paint Party Friday - late and a bit on edge

Thanks much to Eva and Kristin's Paint Party Friday for giving many of us this cool chance to paint!

Chose to, in a pre-boat-painting mode, take out temperas and see what I could come up with. Was discussing with a friend earlier that it is very difficult to come up with something creative out of wholecloth, with nothing photographic or life-like to refer to. It's an interesting problem - coming up with new stuff. Part of it is brave - confronting the blank paper with no plan or preconceived notion. Part of it I think involves having the ability to channel the freefloating creativity existing within so as to come up with something specific. The third test of course is being able to access the skills and techniques of painting/rendering with no outside guidance (IE no model of any sort).

These areas are one I have lacking which is why free form things I do come out a little weird. Hence, this man that reminds me of some of the weird things I had to cook up for life drawing class! On the other hand, one's mood informs what comes out and this piece captures the fact I feel more than a little 'on edge' right now.

Was at a community meeting last night and ate waaaaaay too much sugar - then over to the pancake place for biscuits and such - and this comes out! In the interim undergoing the stress of translating my project idea to reality - don't know. On edge. This is what being on edge looks like I guess.................

Sunday Sketches - micro comission

Appropriately timed for Sunday Sketches, here is a micro commission for a site called fiverr that I did for some people.

The fun of charcoal is that it allows many depths of expression with little colour, which is fun for me since I tend to go for the exceedingly oversaturated look re. my colour pallete.

Another fun part is finding is looking a bit like a chimney sweeper afterwards, what with all the charcoal all over the place!

All please peruse the other great entries on Sunday Sketches. Another week of creativity in action.

Paint Party Friday - Sad House

paint party friday - tempera

I don't know why the house is sad - poss. because it's the dark moon and I am sad, because all I wanted has failed to come to pass and it's pretty much my fault, my doing, etc. And because it takes so long to paint a simple painting and then you might not be happy with it. Or just because it resembles some of the sad houses, abandoned, in the area. A mix between a barn and a house, not having seen inhabitants for ages. Also 'sad' due to 'blue', and the blueness of it, which denotes the sad.

Anyway - this was all tempera on paper - with some acrylic thrown in for good measure. I saw some people utilize cool background effects and I tried for that.

I have used this method before - same paints, then epoxy resin and cardboard/sheetrock back. Lasts forever and looks insanely cool. The difference is astounding between the re epoxy and post epoxy as can be seen here

Creative Tuesday - Capricorn chews gum

Seem a fitting whimsical drawing for saying goodbye to Capricorn in a day or so - though the astrologically inclined might quickly point out that Sagitarrius is actually the half-man, half-beast. I tend to see the satyr figure, with its direct relation to goats, as falling more in the realm of Capricorn.

To find the hardworking, ever-serious Cappy in such a playful, time-wasting mood may seem weird until one remembers that towards the end of the sign, he starts to relax somewhat, looking forward to more freedom and airiness of the following sign (hence the bubble)

This actually was inspired by Creative Tuesdays theme: bubble gum. More can be seen here: http://creativetuesdays.blogspot.com/2012/01/bubblegum-50.html

Sunday Sketches - stumbling onto online art co-ops

Sometime around 11pm last night, my internet spazzed out. I fought with it for an hour or so, then gave up.

Here I was at 1am with no internet! What was I supposed to do?

Seeing as I can never honestly get to sleep much before 3am, I decided to look at some old sketchbooks, recalling the days when I spent more time with pencil and paper than the electronic beast. I started with the bug, which led to the tree, which led to the... etc

So here it is - the first freeform sketch I've done in at least a year.

I have a dear friend on this blog who has indirectly introduced me to artists' blogs (due to her lively comments life), and I have, the past few days, become interested in what other artists do online. I have no idea why it never occurred to me to do this sooner - let's just say there's heaps of things that reasonable people do that don't easily occur to me.

But it's fun! And even more fun are the art co-ops, a very Aquarian modality of artists getting together to pool resources of creativity and support, and create a venue for structure, deadlines, and light critique - all things dearly missing to anyone blessed enough to have spent time in an arts learning institution.

So, here a list of some of these fine art co-ops

• Sunday Sketches
• Creative Tuesdays
• Paint Party Fridays
• Monthly Challenges at Blogland
• Sweet Saturdays
  

So, I took out my old sketchbook, looked at that tree thing that emerged last night, and decided "why not? it was sketched on a Sunday, after all." So I added the type a few minutes ago, and presto. Instant Sunday Sketch.

The interesting part is that the THEMATIC so clearly resembles the thematic of the SS blog button - entirely unintentional - I had not seen it till a good 10 hours after sketching the above. Interesting, eh?

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When i first set out to sketch, period, I was a little nervous, i guess. It's been 2 years since I habitually sketched something - no matter what it was, on pen, pencil and paper - that I wondered if I had somehow 'lost it'. At that point in time I used to go out in public and sketch people, a lot. I have 2 or 3 journals of live people sketches in various poses - not all of them good, but yes serving to keep a hand in the whole live figure rendering process.

Having a weekly process such as this might well be the thing to get me back into that vibe, which I wonder why I got off in the first place.