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Over the weekend some of my art girlfriends, and I got together for our once a month meeting.  We never miss a month , and we always leave energized!  Saturday as we gathered together you would think we hadn’t seen each other in years.  The chitter chatter, the voice overs, and ideas are almost too much to keep up with.  At one point there were three different conversations going on, and I wanted to hear all of them!  Once we  settled down and began some serious ideas, it was already lunch time, and we were all hungary!  Where did the morning go?

Lunch was fabulous as always, each of us bringing something different, and always being fit for the artsy fartsy sisters we have grown to be!  There was so much on our agenda, and we all had brought in tissue paper, medium, brushes, buckets, and color.  This was going to be wicked  messy fun!  Our intent was to share a technique learned from Carry Burns Brown.  One of the sisters had worked extensively on this, and her papers were pretty darn good.  Since we all are mixed media artists, this would be  a pretty useful technique.  We were all handed a few items to trigger our creativity, and after the oohs, and aahs, this is what we had.  A plastic screen with the holes about 1″ square, and a roll of textured wallpaper!  Our minds went racing and once again the volume of  the chitter chatter started to rise!  We all had ideas for both of these items, and they weren’t necessarily the same!

Settling down to share artwork we had completed, or problems one of us was having, the group started to focus.  It must have been all the full tummies, one never does well when their hungry!  We threw ideas out, mulled them over, and exchanged thoughts.  Each of us having favorite formats, and color choices to work with, and each of us a little quirky and creatively unique!  When the whole thing was said and done, we never worked on our project, never even looked at the paints, but we did have a valuable day sharing our thoughts, and ideas about mixed media art!

While rummaging through some papers in my studio, I found a handout from a class taken with Susan Kopp several years ago, maybe this will help some of you unleash your  creativity.

 10 Things You Can Do To Be More Creative

1.  Make the decision to be more creative in whatever you are doing.

2.  Work on an experimental level.  Don’t limit yourself to only one thing or one way of doing something

3. Experiment with new materials and new ideas.

4.  Leave room for new things to happen.  Once it’s started, let the painting lead the way.

5.  Be more fluid in your work.  Try to get more energy into it.

6.  Exaggerate something.

7.  Use strong color to express emotion.

8.  Keep making it personal.  Value your intuition and go with it more often.

9,  You have to take risks–even risk failure. (You know how I feel about this one!)

10.  Just relax, let go, and do it!

I have to say painting with music going helps me also, and sketching or painting each day helps me get better at what I love.  The thing is, finding the music that taps into your right brain is important.  For instance,   classical music helps me paint with watercolors. The tranquility, and relaxation that comes from classical helps me to be patient, and methodical, something needed when using that medium.   Abstract on the other hand really could use energetic music, something that gets you going, gets you out of your own head, and keeps that right brain firing more quickly!  Whatever your choice of music, it will help connect to your muse!

Friday I spoke  of the backpack I had decorated for my husband Les.  Working at the end of a long evening, and without thinking about why it didn’t feel right, I inadvertently heat set the musical notes on backwards!  Yikes, now what do I do?  Here is a perfect opportunity to live up to my motto…There are no mistakes in art,  just opportunities to be more creative!  Well, after thinking about it all night long,  and I knew I would, I decided to try to steaming them off.  I’m happy to let you know — it worked!  The next morning I started in, steaming each one, and picking them off with tweezers.  I then went about cutting more notes  out, and resetting them.  Staying awake to think out a solution left me with two choices…I could hopefully steam them off, and redo them, or I’d be cutting out big hats to put on very flat clown feet, making it look like quirky squatty musicians.  Boy was I lucky!  I don’t even know what quirky squatty musicians look like!   Have you ever had to rethink something that wasn’t ment to be, finding an out of the box  solution for  a project similar to this?  You get big points for figuring it out, and it truly takes an artist brain to accomplish this!