I spent last Sunday with a lovely group of creative women in North Gower, gorgeous surroundings, and I ran a 2 hour art session called, ‘Drawing for the Terrified‘, where I aimed to demystify drawing and help people to feel comfortable with it. I started of with a group activity I call ‘Action Scribbling’. I taped a roll of paper along a table and put a few boxes of drawing materials out – chalky pastels, oily pastels, compressed charcoal and chalk and I asked each of the dozen participants to choose two, one for each hand and then we started to move very quickly around the table, scribbling onto the paper with both hands as we rushed around for 5 minutes. It was fun and at the end we had a table full of colour and movement, rather like a work like Jackson Pollock. I gave everyone a small mount card and asked them to find the smaller pictures within the larger one. It’s surprising what we discovered – landscapes, seascapes, beautiful abstracts…..
It looks a wonderful activity/exercise!
It’s good fun, an excellent ice breaker, but messy!
This really sounds interesting, Rosie, and it’s somewhat the way I used to work when I did mixed media, sometimes finding places in painted or drawn on areas, cutting them out, and then collaging them back together. The system over at my site has just stopped giving us a reply option, it’s set up that way and I haven’t found a way around it yet. So I’ll continue our conversation here: Wow, I would have turned around on that road rather than trying to walk through geese too! I know chickens will jump on you, one jumped on my knee once. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you mind if I re-share one of your cat drawing posts on my facebook cat page. Maybe early one week, there seem to be more people around when weeks begin.
Hi Leah,, collaging sounds like a very good idea. I’ve been wondering about different ways to make my own collage paper. Thanks for the tip.Sparta Puss has just come in and jumped onto the scanner next to me, she must have known we were chatting lol 😀 I’d be delighted if you want to share my cat posts, please feel free. Rose x
I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with Rosie! I really started collaging to sort of patch drawings that had areas needing something different from what had happened in the drawing process. Then I did several from ‘scratch’, cutting out places of other drawings, and making various effects, like waxy charcoal rubbed over textured surface for the purpose of putting them together with other techniques and gluing a drawing together. It was loads of fun. One day I’ll try to get good scans of the old work and post along with pics of the feline supervisors of the time. Ultraviolet waves at Sparta Puss!
I’d love to see some of your old work and Sparta Puss wants to see your feline overseers lol 😀
I and my Rainbow Bridge kitties are very flattered! I enjoy seeing your work and all the inventive directions you take it every day. I think it will take me about 6 months trying to get the books out and then I hope for time to scan and post the art stuff, to me it’s so much more fun than writing. I did post one of your Sparta Puss drawing posts on the facebook cat page, with another one in the comments. My page doesn’t get many views but maybe once I get the darn books out I can try boosting posts, doing a whole series of artists and writers who portray cats.
Oh that would be lovely, so many cat-loving artists out there ☺