I feel like I've been seeing a lot of things that remind me of floral and impressionism this past week! Here are a few I wanted to share with you: this amazing piece of toast--yes toast!--with labneh flower art by Lily and this beautifully detailed painting featuring only 2 main colors that reminded me of thick impasto paint (I unfortunately couldn't find who the artist was of this piece)--I love the way light and shadow are portrayed here:

And here's some more inspiration below from our community and what we've been creating! (This email is on the longer side so be sure to click “view entire message” if yours gets cut off!)

"I've been working with linocut rubber blocks recently and I thought that ‘floral’ was a great idea for a print! 

 

This prompt gave me a chance to mix inks which I haven't done -- I basically have and have been using the colors that came in my kit along with a white and a gold that I bought separately, so I used the white with red to make a pink and then I mixed the yellow and the blue that I had with white to make a lighter green! Not sure how most people would mix the inks but I did it right on the piece of metal I roll the brayer over -- using a plastic spoon to combine them first. Maybe there's another way.

 

I love working with these pink rubber blocks. They are so soft and easy to cut!! I'm enjoying experimenting with them!" - CLAUDIA

“I took my old birthday cards from friends and loved ones this past March and made a single collage of their pieces. I’m not really a collage-y person but like the idea of REPURPOSING the cards into one artsy memory. The background was not my watercolor but the backing of one of my cards. I love the ladies sharing the experience together as it reminds me how grateful I am to have my friends and family to celebrate special occasions. I am blessed.” - KAREN This is such a great idea!

“Environment: I used hydrangea and lemon blossoms as tools to paint/stamp with.” -- MITZI

“Repurpose: I used an old issue of Cliffs Notes. I have way more of these than I should . . . even for a recovering English teacher. I taught Wuthering Heights exactly once in my AP Lit class. I just don't enjoy the book. I think I traumatized students by showing them the Kate Bush video 😂😂😂. (You know you have to Google that now.) Anyway, you can see Mr. McDermott's name written on the page I used. He left North before I arrived and this was passed down to me from Carol Edwards. I like the description of how CN should be used by students and the explanation of the theme of the book. After gluing that down, I added a thin layer of gold acrylic because I like the metallic sheen. Then I took a piece of corrugated cardboard that I thought was cool, painted it with acrylic and stamped it on top.

It was fun to repurpose Cliffs Notes in celebration of my retirement from teaching English. ❤️ Maybe I'd enjoy Wuthering Heights if I gave it another chance…”  - MITZI

1994 & 2024: recreated this drawing I made 30 years later for “growth”! I wanted to use the same materials and keep it as close to the original as possible. Which actually stressed me out because I don’t normally draw scenes like this or use colored pencils and find it hard to make the lines blend smoothly. I was kind of procrastinating but then I thought, 10 year old me was not worried about that! She just did it because she loved to draw and didn’t care if the lines weren’t blended in perfectly! So I just went for it!

It was a good lesson learned—I remember drawing pages and pages of things in one afternoon! There was a lot less perfectionism and negative self talk holding me back, back then.

My drawing now isn’t perfect but the lines are a little straighter, the colored pencil blends in a little better (I just made it like I wanted the lines to show on purpose lol), and my proportions have improved. But I still love this quote and I still love drawing and art and in a lot of ways, I am still that same 10 year old and hope I never grow out of her 👧🏻💛

If you have some childhood work lying around, I highly recommend recreating it and seeing what happens :)

For environment I printed out photos from my phone, cut them out, and created a collage. If you take a ton of flower and plant photos like I do, try using them in this way!

 

For repurpose I used different scraps I had from past pages and projects. This is actually the last page of this sketchbook and it feels very fitting to have it be made up of bits and pieces of the pages before :) 

Keep creating, have a wonderful weekend, and I'll talk to you soon with our second May prompt!