Saturday, January 11, 2014

Six Words and The Purpose of Art

week 1

Here is my first page for the art challenge this year. The four prompts were:  choose six random words from a book, birdcage, resist technique, and a quote from Pablo Picasso. I’m not quite finished, I want to write something using the six words, and I need to add Picasso’s name after the quote.

The background and the photo of myself was part of a page I made for last year’s challenge, addressing the prompt “Celebrate me,” so I wrote around my photo. I didn’t finish the page last year (it was also supposed to have “sew scraps together”), so I decided to add to it. I really liked the colors, and the bird on my t-shirt, so I went with the same combo for this week. (The words on my shirt are backwards because I took the photo in the mirror, but it says “Be free with me”).

For the first part of this week’s prompts, I used the book “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. I opened it to page 168 and randomly placed my finger on the following six words:  man, humble, became, joy, and, wiped. I then changed the order to say “Man wiped joy and became humble.” It sounds very profound at first, and I’m sure I could take it in many intriguing directions, but for now it’s just words on the birdcage. I’ll post a photo of it when I add more.

For the second part, birdcage, I found an image online and printed it out, cut it out, and just used my finger to put paint on the white spaces. Other than the bird on my t-shirt it doesn’t really relate to anything on the page, but I’m ok with that. The essence of the quote could be related to it if I wanted to write more about it, and it’s just a fun image in general. That’s one of the great things about art journals – they sort of grow with you as you experiment and play.

For the resist technique I used one of my favorites, modeling paste. I left a space where the word “art” would go in the quote, and after gluing the rest of the words down I just spread some modeling paste there. Then, before it dried, I took some alpha stamps and pressed them down. I may paint them turquoise….

For the quote, I just took some small alpha stamps and used aquamarine ink on yellow paper, then cut around the words. Nothing fancy but I like the look.

All that’s left now is to journal, and add those few elements I mentioned. For this next week, the four elements are:  use mixed media (my goal is to use at least four different kinds), do an image transfer (lots of videos online to help if you’ve never tried one), earth, and the quote “Not all that has beauty is good, but all that is good has beauty.” I will be using another page from last year for mine, so I already have a good start. More to come soon! Have fun, be creative, and play safe friends!

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