How's it going with this prompt and the Creative Kickstart so far? Wherever you are in he process, I hope you are enjoying it and finding the time and inspiration to create! Here's what our community has been making along with a mythical inspired playlist for you! (If this email gets clipped for length, please make sure to hit “view entire message" at the bottom of the email to see it in its entirety!) 

“The Cycle of Life” by SABRINA

“I felt like a child experimenting with color and ice. First applying watercolor to ice cubes and letting them melt overnight, and adding some details for an aurora borealis(ish) mountain landscape.” - SABRINA

"I've been following the ultimate world cruise on tiktok and they went to Antarctica and those on the cruise on social media posted lots of photographs and video of these beautiful icebergs and glacial chunks in the ocean where they sailed. Some of those also did not look like ice but rather like man-made carved shapes with holes and colors and light. Just gorgeous.

 

I was doing a Februllage page and needed a tiny bit of this pretty blue color I have and since I squeezed more out onto my palette than I needed I ended up using the paint on a sketchbook page - just roughly painting a background with it. Then, as I was considering the prompt "ice" it seemed to be a color related to ice. I collect the rectangles of cardboard that come in take out bags from my local Chinese restaurant and I painted over one of them with white paint and then cut it into squares. So I've made ice blocks! I'm thinking about ice before the days of refrigeration when the ice companies would take huge chunks of ice from upstate New York in frozen areas in the winter and bring them into the city to be delivered by horse and wagon to people's homes and apartments. 😀" - CLAUDIA

"Watercolor and gouache. I knew I wanted to use salt with the watercolors. I had an idea in mind, but then I went to beach yoga on Wed. I just loved the way the ocean and sky looked after the storm we had here in SoCal, so I took some pictures. This is my interpretation of that view (can't really compete with the art nature provides though). After painting I sprinkled lots of Kosher salt and misted with water. I dabbled a little gouache here and there to blue things a bit more. I'm pretty happy with the result." - MITZI

Karen used the first “ice cave” image for her watercolor subject. “I started with a blue watercolor pencil to guide form which was tricky. Then used a few deep blue watercolors to carve out the depth. In some places I just painted with the pencil. The last page I used white, baby blue, and deep blue wc pens for accent. I’m always surprised when I can tell-what-it-is, lol. But, can’t decide if the last image with accents is truly better than second to last. Which do you prefer?” - KAREN

It’s been snowing here in NM and I was so excited that it happened the night before I was going to work on my sketchbook page! 🌨️ I was able to get some fresh powder off my car and use it to paint with. I love collaborating with elements and not knowing how it’ll turn out! We’ve also been talking about abstract expressionism in the newsletter so I knew I wanted to create an abstract piece.

I started by adding the snow to my page and drizzling acrylic paint, ink, and watercolors on top of it and leaving it there to melt, mix, and dry.

Once it dried I brushed watercolor onto an ice cube and painted around the edges. This worked out way better than I thought and was really fun! Since the ice melts as you paint, it creates a lot of water for the paint to spread into.

When I finished, I realized it looked a lot like the inspiration ice cave photo taken by @greg.rosenke. I was really drawn to it so I think subconsciously it was guiding me through this prompt!

"I decided to do a Phoenix rising! I started with some random red paint underneath (actually cleaning my brush off on the page from another piece) and then I lay some yellow tissue paper down and some other sparkly papers on the bottom for flames and made some marks with different paint pens to try to define the Phoenix over the tissue papers! By the way it's not so easy to outline over lumpy mod podge tissue paper with a paint pen! LOL" - CLAUDIA

I think I finally settled on what I want to do for mythical--I saw this dragon created from fruit by lilybubbletea the other day and absolutely loved it! I feel really inspired to create an image of a dragon's face like this. Still working out the details but loving the colors and textures here. 

We have one more prompt for the Creative Kickstart series which will be sent out on Friday! This will be followed by a 1 week break where you can catch up, try an idea you didn't get a chance to explore, or rest. Then we'll be heading into the month of March (I can't believe it, feels like we just started this yesterday!) where we'll get 2 weeks to work on each prompt. You can find all the past prompts and the calendar over in the Prompt Library. 

 

Keep on creating and if perfectionism is stopping you (I think a lot of us can relate to this!), take a look at this--it's a beautiful perspective and reminder. Thank you Mitzi for sharing this!

 

Have a good week ahead and talk to you soon!