Sticking Together 1
We're all in this together, supporting each other and coming together in new and unprecedented ways. While we may feel detached from reality as we know it, we are discovering new ways to connect and relate. Collage is the perfect medium to take disparate elements and stick them together in imaginative and exciting ways. How can you bring together diverse imagery and make work that is original, playful and meaningful? Show us your stuff!
Sticking Together 2
We are all adapting to not having everything at our fingertips that we need for artmaking. Some of your favorite tools may not be with you in your home at the moment. Here's a fun alternative tool capable of beautiful, varied marks -- we love drawing with sticks that we find on the ground that have fallen off trees, dipped into ink or even watered down acrylic paint. Each found stick has a different personality and leaves a different mark. You can sharpen the tips, splay them, blunt them and more. Use thick sticks, thin sticks, long sticks, short sticks, and everything in between. You can use a six-foot-long stick and get that measurement right for social distancing. One artist whose work we love in England sometimes uses chopsticks to draw with -- another alternative drawing tool you may have on hand!
Sticking Together 3
You may be longing for the days when we can gather together as groups again. For now, we can live vicariously through the multi-figure compositions of our favorite master paintings. Choose some you love (Poussin, Titian, Giotto, and Bruegel are a few artists to look at) and draw or collage from their work to understand the relationships between all of the figures - the spaces between them, how they overlap, what the scale differences are, where they are within the rectangle, as well as gestures, rhythms, value relationships of the shapes and more.
New perspectives
Our perspectives on what is important change radically during tough times. Can our perspectives on how we look at the visual change as well? How often do we look straight up when we draw, or down at the ground? Discover what you miss when you have always only focused straight ahead by changing your perspective.
Bringing color to your quarantine
Working from a black and white image of your choice -- a family photo, media image, or reproduction of a master painting -- translate the image into one of fun and inventive color. Don't fee that you need to stick to the expected. Push yourself to be playful and creative, even to the point of Fauvism.
What's been shelved
So many events that we had planned or looked forward to have been canceled or postponed - shelved until a later date when it's safe to gather. While we wait, let's examine what's on the shelves in our homes, and use them as subjects for drawing. The most beautiful still lifes happen naturally on storage shelves. What's on the shelves in your pantry, cabinets, closets or bookshelves? Don't rearrange your shelves - just draw what you see.