Dear Wonderful, Creative You:

How does curiosity relate to art making? I think there are a number of ways, and I’d like to show you some of my paper cut journals to illustrate how you can be more curious, and make more art.

1. Curious Artists Indulge in Really Seeing

For my this paper cut journal, I’ve been exploring some of the nature-based themes that have long-fascinated me: eggs and patterns in nature. I make lots of sketches in my journal about both of these topics, and when I need ideas, I page through my journals and usually find something to get me started.

Taking the time to know a thing makes it familiar to you, and therefore easier, and more fun to render. The painter Andrew Wyeth talked about how his father, and mentor, N.C. Wyeth, taught him to study his subject at length, to not just see it, but to feel it, to enter it, and to become one with it. I would venture to say this method worked out okay for Wyeth.

2. Curious Artists Spend Time Researching, Daydreaming and Planning

If you give yourself permission to indulge your curiosities – whether that’s the designs found in animal fur, leaves, or a field of wild flowers, or you are interested in old typewriters, it will make your art richer and more fun. Plus, all this “art prep time” counts as art time.

Creativity is a lot like farming, you’ve got to fertilize the ground and gather seeds before you expect to plant something and have it grow. Give yourself permission to dig into a topic that lights you up.

Go to the library, check out a book or two, and get to know it deeply. Knowing the story of the thing enriches our experience of it. Then it’s fun to make sketches and notes, play with ideas, and explore what you find in visual form. And by the way, you can do all this preparatory exploration and still work intuitively without a strict plan.

About a year ago, I read a book on bird eggs, and studied the variation in egg shapes, colors, patterns, and how incubation varies species to species. Learning so much about eggs made me feel closer to them, like they were suddenly more personal and dear to me. Feeling this way about our art makes it more meaningful, and drives you to want to make more.

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3. Curious Artists Push Their Work

When you have a hunger to explore and know something, you explore it from 7 different angles, in 3 different mediums, create it backwards and forwards, and ultimately, find your best work.

Repeat yourself.

A lot.

Make tiny variations, but repeat yourself. You’ll have more fun, increase your skills, and make better art.

What’s got your interest piqued? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Creatively Yours,

Amy

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Dear Wonderful, Creative You:

When was the last time you felt completely engrossed in your creative process? Lately I’ve been incredibly engrossed in my art, making art with simple materials. I’d like to help you imagine the same for yourself. In your mind’s eye, imagine yourself doing the following, and see what it feels like:

You carry a small sketchbook and drawing pen with you everywhere, making little notes and sketches as something catches your eye, or an idea strikes. When you open your sketchbook, you see patterns, shapes, and notes for your art pieces. It’s a jumble of scribbles, sketches, notes, and little drawings. It’s not neat and perfect, it’s an inspiring place where ideas are free to co-mingle and marinate. Art making is not just something you do when you sit down at your art table, it’s something you weave into your life.

When you sit down to create, you flip through your journal for inspiration, and pull out some paper to play with one of the ideas. You sit for hours, making slow, steady progress, noticing the shapes emerging, the sounds of art making, and your breathing. You finish tired and happy.

It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  

This could be your story. Playing with simple art materials has offered me incredible creative license, and I want to show you that it can for you too.

Making art with simple materials – just paper and a blade, is incredibly satisfying.

Limitation is the fuel of my creative fire.

But really, I am working with so much more than paper. Once you cut into a page, you begin dancing with light and shadow. All your focus is on shape, form, rhythm, and the way you let the light in.

Wouldn’t you like to let some more light into your life?

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When you give yourself limited materials and permission to create intuitively, without a plan, magic can happen.

I’ve got a brand new class, Layers of Light, that focuses on this kind of intuitive approach to paper cutting. Paper cutting is an old craft and art form, but it’s usually practiced in a very planned, exacting way. I want to open the door for you to create in a way that fills your soul, and brings you delight.

You can learn to paper cut from a pattern. But when you learn to create intuitively, building your own mark making “vocabulary” you open up to your unique expressive voice. You can do more than you think with your art.

Creatively Yours,

Amy

The post Making Art with Simple Materials appeared first on Mindful Art Studio®.