Doodle-Do
January 7, 2013 at 3:30 pm | Posted in Art Studio, Considering Ideas | Leave a commentTags: bird, brainstorming, colored pencil drawing, creative thinking, CREATIVITY, design, doodle, doodling, drawing journal, intuitive, universal symbols
©2013, Joan Desmond, doodle detail.
Webster’s defines doodle as: (to) dawdle; trifle; an aimless or casual scribble, design, or sketch; also: a minor work; Synonymous with fooling around, messing around, fiddling, puttering, etc. The definitions imply that simply making marks on paper, idly, is something unworthy of serious consideration. I once believed that also. My understanding is different now. Now, I see doodling as very similar to intuitive painting. Art is all about making marks.
As a method, doodling is a great brainstorming, block breaking, and creative thinking exercise. Much different than an observational drawing or a planned composition, drawing without a set goal can access the subconscious and key into universal symbols, such as the circle, spiral and triangle. Doodling can also be a starting point. A writer will scribble a word or bits of thought on a scrap of a paper, a napkin, or a receipt, ideas that may develop into an essay, a poem. Similarly, a doodle may be the seed of something else, lead to new directions, highlight concerns, or exist on its own. Here, my doodle detail reminds me again of a love of pattern, and oh Yeah! a reoccurring artistic preoccupation with all things bird, wings, and flight.
Doodle On!
Fish-Go-‘Round: Art from Trash
February 27, 2012 at 8:51 pm | Posted in Art Studio, Considering Ideas | Leave a commentTags: Alexander Calder, brainstorming, fish, Imagination, kids & art, kinetic art, mobile, recycling, repurpose
©2012, Joan Desmond, Fish-Go-‘Round. assemblage.
Fish are patterns, stripes, dots, chroma, shimmer, and flashing movement-darting singly, or en masse. Fish fascinate me and are recurring subject matter, so the idea of “fish mobile” came readily when thinking of something kinetic.
©2012, Joan Desmond, Fish-Go-‘Round-detail.
Although this piece doesn’t go ‘round & ‘round, the fish shapes bob and sway easily with a puff of breath or nearby vibration. Created from wood scraps, wood dowel, a kitchen appliance part, colored bubble wrap, button, cardboard, clothing catalogs, non toxic markers, and fishing line.
Birds anyone? Organic shapes like Alexander Calder used? Leaves perhaps, geometrics…what else may dangle free in a mobile?
Shiny, Shiny Night: art from trash
February 26, 2012 at 10:15 am | Posted in Art Studio, Considering Ideas | Leave a commentTags: brainstorming, Imagination, kids & art, Living Green KRV Festival, mixed media, paperboard, recycling, repurpose, upcycling, Woodrow Wallace School
Shiny, Shiny Night, mixed media by Joan Desmond 2012
For the past week I’ve been imagining again what to do with discards, trash, and used-up items, how they may serve as art material. The prompt was a display to be set up at Woodrow Wallace School to drum up interest for the Youth Recycled Art Show in March, part of the Living Green Festival.
It’s an easy reach to use magazines and paper goods in collage, but what to do with yogurt containers, the numerous caps and lids, the plastics, so many plastics, the Styrofoam (polystyrene foam actually, made from petroleum, why is that still next to our food?), on and on. All I had to do was be particularly conscious of the man-made materials that passed through my hands each day. Much of it gets re-cycled, re-used, and re-purposed but it’s also an endless, free resource for upcycling into art (gottta love new words). The projects needed to be doable for kids.
Here’s the first one. Built on the paperboard/cardboard backing from an empty 9”x12” drawing pad, it uses: colored bubble wrap; foil insulated bubble wrap; foil wrap from a gift plant; foam scraps; take-out container Styrofoam; those trusty magazine cuttings, and glue. It was entirely too much fun to create.
Winescapes- The 6-liter Canvas
April 14, 2010 at 2:47 pm | Posted in Art Studio | 1 CommentTags: abstraction, Bakersfield Museum of Art, benefit auction, brainstorming, CREATIVITY, Daniel Smith acrylics, Exhibition, Golden gel, iridescent paint, painted wine bottle, Winescapes
Until I hefted one I really had no idea how big a 6-liter wine bottle was.
The idea was to “art it up” for a benefit auction at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. I had never worked with a bottle before. When you first brainstorm on an art project, tons of ideas come to mind. You entertain all ideas, from the silly to the fantastic. I considered drilling holes, attaching metal extensions, etching into, gluing onto, putting inside off, shall it be wrapped in grapevines? The whole gamut entertained just to shake loose ideas. In the end the decision was to paint onto. I do love to paint! I’m also painting other landscapes. The idea of a Dionysius ‘scape seemed fitting.
by Joan Desmond 2010
I practiced on a couple of smaller bottles to see the effects of the various mediums on glass. The final decision included some of the luscious interference and duochrome acrylic paint from Daniel Smith. They give the image a rich, reflective quality. I also wanted to keep some of the glass exposed as there is always a relationship between the material and the message, and this was a “glass-see-though-with-depth bottle”. For the main image, which you may recognize as a re-creation of a much larger, 62″, oil painting of mine, a thin application of Yes Paste was used to attach a rectangle of paper. This gave it opaqueness and surface stability. Then a layer of gesso was applied and then the paint. The lettering is in acrylic applied to the glass over gesso, with no paper. Afterwards, for a protective coat it was sealed with thinned Golden Soft Gel.
So just how large is a 6-liter bottle? Here’s a comparison.
“Winescapes -wine tasting and auction”, will be held on Wednesday, April 21 from 6:30pm- 8:30pm at: the Bakersfield Museum of Art, 1930 R St., Bakersfield, CA
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