Beginnings Assignment: No More Excuses Method
In the beginning of the month on a page create a color Monthly palette that represents the month. Make a list of words that come to mind that represent the month and topic Writing Prompt: List images that come to mind.
Rewrite the following poem or quotes on one of your Monthly Art Assignment: pages using a 1. In all lower case Weekly 2. In all upper case 3. Switch color every stanza Do one CARD PEEK each week 4. Write with your opposite hand 5. Try a dip pen Daily 6. Make your letters very wide 7. Make your letters very narrow What color am I today? 8. Capitalize every 5th letter What word am I today? 9. Print Only Draw the weather today 10. Use cursive only Draw a design 11. Alternate between printing and cursive every other word 12. Alternate between upper and lower case every other word
Monthly Collage
Make a collage using torn out magazine or printed out images.
Assignment:
January – Beginnings Make a Collage of all the things that you want for this New Year –
Writing Prompt: Include:
“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.” Images, words, colors, and thoughts ― Walt Whitman
“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” Choose a COLOR and a WORD that will be your focus for 2013. ― Horace Make a New Year’s Resolution Chart. “And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” ― Meister Eckhart IMAGES:
For a New Beginning http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/beginnings/
In out-of-the-way places of the heart, RESOURCES: Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. Color palette Generator - http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php For a long time it has watched your desire, My favorite watercolor palette - http://www.robax.com/palettes.html Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, New Year’s Resolution Charts - http://www.tipjunkie.com/organize/new-year- Noticing how you willed yourself on, resolutions/ Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Weekly Tasks
Then the delight, when your courage kindled, Paint a card peek each week. And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Daily Tasks
Though your destination is not yet clear What color am I today … You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life's desire. Draw the weather
Awaken your spirit to adventure; Draw a design Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
~ John O'Donohue ~ February – Claiming Your Inner Artist Assignment:
Writing Prompt: Create an artist’s plan.
Creators of any kind must find their voice... the tone, style, tenor, pitch, What is your focus? What is your medium? Your color palette? personality we use to express ourselves. Our voice is our essence, writ plain for Your Vision? the world to see. (Leo Babauta) Create a schedule as when you will set aside time for your art. “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.” Collect images of art and artists you admire and put them in your journal. ― Rumi IMAGES: The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul. Wassily Kandinsky http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/inner-artist/
The artist need not know very much, best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks. RESOURCES: Emil Nolde The Artist’s Creed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LZp9rQiibQ
Marry Your Muse ~ Jan Phillips http://www.janphillips.com/muse-intro.html
The Artist’s Way http://juliacameronlive.com/
Weekly Tasks
Paint a card peek each week.
Daily Tasks
What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design March – Style Assignment: Define your own style: Writing Prompt:
“Fashion changes, but style endures.” Create a journal page that answers the following: ― Coco Chanel • Favorite colors “Why change? Everyone has his own style. When you have found it, you should • Favorite images stick to it.” • 3 describing adjectives ― Audrey Hepburn • Home style – i.e. vintage, modern, classic • Favorite artists “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn” • Work Style – i.e. quick, detailed, meticulous ― Orson Welles
“Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” IMAGES: ― Anna Wintour http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/style/
RESOURCES:
Finding your photographic style:
http://blog.mingthein.com/2012/05/13/defining-style-and-finding-your- This Modest Style own/ BY RAMÓN LÓPEZ VELARDE Finding your artistic style: http://blog.mingthein.com/2012/05/13/defining-style-and-finding-your- It's how she spreads, without a sound, her scent own/ of orange blossom on the dark of me, Finding Your Signature Style: http://artbistro.monster.com/benefits/articles/11560-finding-your-signature- it is the way she shrouds in mourning black style-as-an-artist her mother-of-pearl and ivory, the way she wears the lace ruff at her throat, and how Weekly Tasks she turns her face, quite voiceless, self-possessed, Paint a card peek each week. because she takes the language straight to heart, Daily Tasks is thrifty with the words she speaks. What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design
April – Photographs Assignment: Take your camera or camera phone with you everyday and take at least 10 Writing Prompt: photographs each week.
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images Print them out in 2”x2” prints and create a grid collage. become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” Choose an image and crop to find the best part. ― Ansel Adams Choose an image and change to black and white.
“A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” IMAGES: ― Diane Arbus http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/photographs/ “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely RESOURCES: by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s Annie Leibovitz relentless melt.” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/annie- ― Susan Sontag leibovitz/life-through-a-lens/16/
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” 10 questions for Annie Leibovitz ― Marc Riboud http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,3335573001_186254 5,00.html “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” ― Eudora Welty Life through the Lens https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/annie-leibovitz-life- “To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture through/id293766422 fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.” Sally Mann ― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and http://sallymann.com/ Photographers http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/sally-mann
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed Weekly Tasks into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is Paint a card peek each week. the truth. ” ― Richard Avedon Daily Tasks “Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” ― Alfred Stieglitz What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design
May – Drawing Assignment: Fold a sheet of paper into 12 squares. Using a pen and a timer set for 10 Writing Prompt: seconds. Draw the following in each block – whatever comes to mind. 1. Anger “I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad 2. Joy time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever.” 3. Sadness ― Beatrix Potter 4. Depression 5. Laughter “All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.” 6. Anxiety ― John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing 7. Fear 8. Confidence “I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river, I'm still learning how to see 9. Worry them; I'm still discovering how to render their forms. I will spend a lifetime 10. Freedom doing that. Maybe someday I'll get it right.” 11. Strength ― Alan Lee 12. Weakness
Drawing is the 'bones' of art. You have to be able to walk before you can run. IMAGES: (Dion Archibald) http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/drawing/
“It’s only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one RESOURCES: fine day you discover to your surprise, that you have rendered something in it’s The Drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci true character.” Camille Pissarro http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org/
“Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain know that he holds a great treasure.” Michelangelo http://www.drawright.com/
“I draw like other people bite their nails.” Pablo Picasso Gesture Drawing Exercise: http://www.ndoylefineart.com/gesture3.html “Drawing keeps the eye fresh, the mind alive, and the intuition nimble.” Timothy Nero 10 drawing Tips http://thevirtualinstructor.com/QuicktipsDrawing.html Betty Edwards has used the terms L-Mode and R-Mode to designate two ways of knowing and seeing - the verbal, analytic mode and the visual, perceptual Weekly Tasks mode - no matter where they are located in the individual brain. You are probably aware of these different characteristics. L-mode is a step-by-step style Paint a card peek each week. of thinking, using words, numbers and other symbols. L-mode strings things out in sequences, like words in a sentence. R-mode on the other hand, uses visual information and processes, not step-by-step, but all at once, like Daily Tasks recognizing the face of a friend. What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design JUNE – Painting Assignment: Writing Prompt: Paint an image in the style of one of the following artists. Paint an apple using watercolor. Paint an apple using acrylics. “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” ― Vincent van Gogh IMAGES:
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/painting/ sitter.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray RESOURCES: “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” Franz Kline – Abstract Expressionism ― Pablo Picasso http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3148
“I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” Helen Frankenthaler ― Frida Kahlo http://www.theartstory.org/artist-frankenthaler-helen.htm
Artemisia Gentileschi The Painter http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml BY JOHN ASHBERY
Sitting between the sea and the buildings Weekly Tasks He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait. Paint a card peek each week. But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject Daily Tasks To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush, What color am I today … Plaster its own portrait on the canvas. Draw the weather So there was never any paint on his canvas Draw a design Until the people who lived in the buildings Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait, Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”
July - Poetry Writing Prompt: Assignment: “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” Write and illustrate your own poem or someone else’s. Using interesting script ― Leonardo da Vinci and beautiful drawings.
“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” IMAGES: ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/poetry/
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, RESOURCES: Poetry: That we may record our emptiness.” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/ ― Kahlil Gibran Writing Poetry “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” http://www.susanwooldridge.com/ ― Robert Frost How to Write a Poem “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-poetry.html ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own Mary Oliver “You do not have to be good. http://maryoliver.beacon.org/ You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. Great Poetry Collections You only have to let the soft animal of your body http://www.amazon.com/Roger- love what it loves. Housden/e/B001IGODW6/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1352151877&sr=8-1 Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain Weekly Tasks are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, Paint a card peek each week. the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, Daily Tasks are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, What color am I today … call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place Draw the weather in the family of things.” ― Mary Oliver Draw a design
August –The Sea Assignment:
Writing Prompt: Draw and label different shell everyday.
“My soul is full of longing Use details and watercolor. for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow IMAGES: “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/sea-shells/ unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
"As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the RESOURCES: moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow Sea Shell Identification http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/seashell-identification/ swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!" Types of Seashells http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/seashell-identification/ Camus, Albert
Vintage Seashell Images
http://vintageprintable.swivelchairmedia.com/animal/animal-sea-shells-and- A soft Sea washed around the House related/animal-sea-shells-and-related-2/ A Sea of Summer Air
And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care -- For Captain was the Butterfly Weekly Tasks For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe Paint a card peek each week. For the delighted crew. Daily Tasks Emily Dickenson What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design
September –Time Assignment:
Writing Prompt: Log how much time y6ou spend doing art everyday.
“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In Draw a pocket watch. time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” ― Rose Kennedy Print images of grandfather clocks and Cut them apart and reassemble to create your own. “Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ” ― Coco Chanel IMAGES: “ You may delay, but time will not.” http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/time/ ― Benjamin Franklin
“Time is an illusion.” ― Albert Einstein
The Time RESOURCES: Time Management Tips Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/time-management/wl00048 in winter especially. Summer comes, I want to tumble with the river Artists and Time over rocks and mossy dams. http://www.pbs.org/art21/films/time
A fish drifting upside down. How to Draw a pocket watch Slow accordians sweeten the breeze. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCjSdw5QGc
The Sanitary Mattress Factory says, "Sleep is Life." Weekly Tasks Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon? Paint a card peek each week. Yesterday someone said, "It gets late so early." I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it. Daily Tasks Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~ What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design
October – Silhouettes /Shadows Assignment:
Create your own silhouette from a photo. Writing Prompt: Tutorial: How to create a silhouette on Photoshop CS5 “I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWqYB2uzws
“... there are shadows because there are hills.” IMAGES ― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/silhouettes-shadows/
“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.” Emerson, Ralph Waldo RESOURCES: How to make a silhouette My Shadow http://www.ehow.com/how_2267239_make-silhouette-art-piece.html
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON History of Silhouettes I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/quick-history-silhouettesretro-125272
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. Cut Arts He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; http://cutarts.com/
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. Weekly Tasks The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— Paint a card peek each week. Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, Daily Tasks And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. What color am I today …
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, Draw the weather
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. Draw a design He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
November – Dreams Assignment:
Once a week write down what you dream and create a collage or drawing from Writing Prompt: it.
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.” IMAGES: ― John Lennon
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/dreams/ moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
― C.S. Lewis
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” ― Edgar Allan Poe RESOURCES: Dream Dictionary Bad dreams http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/ Jung on Dreams http://www.carl-jung.net/dreams.html One day you will look back and laugh at yourself. Native American Dream catchers http://www.native-languages.org/dreamcatchers.htm You’ll say, ‘ I can’t believe I was so asleep! How to make a dream catcher How did I ever forget the truth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVSXXeFF-Gw
How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness
Are anything other than bad dreams.’ Weekly Tasks - Rumi
Paint a card peek each week.
Daily Tasks
What color am I today …
Draw the weather
Draw a design
December – Doorways/Abundance Assignment: Writing Prompt: Draw an open doorway and in its opening write what you want to see on the “Be an opener of doors” other side. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Make a list of Abundance.
“Why it's simply impassible! IMAGES: Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!” http://pinterest.com/ginararmfield/doors/ ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”
― Pablo Picasso RESOURCES:
How to draw a door in Perspective Abundance is merely a reflection of what you allow yourself. -- Marianne http://www.olejarz.com/arted/perspective/door.html Williamson
Simple Abundance The Lockless Door by Robert Frost http://www.simpleabundance.com/ It went many years,
But at last came a knock, And I though of the door With no lock to lock. Weekly Tasks
I blew out the light, Paint a card peek each week. I tip-toed the floor, And raised both hands Daily Tasks In prayer to the door. What color am I today … But the knock came again. My window was wide; Draw the weather I climbed on the sill And descended outside. Draw a design Back over the sill I bade a 'Come in' To whatever the knock At the door may have been.
So at a knock I emptied my cage To hide in the world And alter with age.