“A luminous
mountain morning.
Little flowers
peep out
from the
abandoned trails
in early spring
and gaze at a
new road.”
Bhuwan Thapaliya Are you seeing early signs of spring yet? March 19th officially marks the beginning of the new season. With it comes a sense of growth and renewal in the world around us. How do you connect with “growth” and what does it inspire within you? Use the ideas below as a starting point for your creative brainstorm or try some of the tutorials below. Notice what speaks to you--a single word that stays on your mind, a color that catches your eye, or a feeling a certain technique gives you. Explore, extract, and expand. |
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- Plants and flowers Growth always reminds me of a seed growing into a plant or flower. Here are some watercolor tutorials to try: leaves, easy flowers, 3 flowers for beginners. I also love this contour flower still life and this botanical collage.
- Is there something or someone you've grown to love? Maybe it wasn't so easy in the beginning but you've had a change of heart. Make that the subject / inspiration for your piece.
- New Growth by Gio Swaby uses fabrics sewn onto canvas to celebrate womanhood and blackness. I love the way she uses silhouettes and mixes fabric--do you have some textiles lying around? Try using them this week. Here are some more examples of Gio's work.
- There are times of growth and times of stillness. Where are you in your journey? Brainstorm different words that come to you about this. Use those words as a starting point for your page.
- Otherworldy Ceramic Forms by Janny Baek Evoke Growth and Transformation. I thought this was a great examples of how to use abstract shapes, colors, and patterns to represent feelings and ideas.
- “Let the strange and exotic spring up.” Read or listen to Mary Walker's full poem, “Thrive” by clicking here.
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Dancer at Pigalle by Gino Severini, 1912 & Ascending Forms by Gerardo Dottori, 1930 |
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- Growth in Futurism. These artists from our art movement for the month also wanted to grow, to leave traditional notions in the past and move forward with the machine age. What ideas or things do you want to leave in the past? What do you want to take and move forward with?
- Consider using Futurism characteristics to help express your ideas. This includes: repetition, blurring, Divisionism (breaking down light and colour into a series of stippled dots and stripes, fracturing the picture plane into segments), creating tonal value. Or look at the images above, see what you like about them, and carry those things into your work.
- Grow into your page. Start small in one corner focusing on filling in that tiny space. Then start to expand out and onto the rest of the page. Play around with mark making, change the amount of detail being used (more in the corner and less expanding out maybe?), try different tools, and explore positive / negative space as well as movement!
- Expansion, rise, surge, improvement, advance, prosperity, leap. Sometimes we immediately connect with a specific word. These are other variations of “growth” that may trigger different images and ideas.
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This weekend, look for and observe moments of growth or stillness around you and within you. Happy spring and talk to you soon! |
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