Steam Punk Insects
Arthrobots is a site showing the work of Tom Hardwidge, amazing creativity and very detailed skills. Is it art or artefact… You tell me.
Thanks to Jo Morgan for sharing this with me,
do you have any Visual Art sites our readers should know about?
March 14, 2011 | Filed Under Art Stuff | Leave a Comment
Just when you thought…
There were no new ideas in Art…
Try creating one of these or a variation on one or three of them. Remember it’s all about starting points, where you end up might be another thing entirely!
- Imagine drawing a bunch of objects made out of glass, but things which were very improbably glass objects. Or try clear blow up plastic. Try a bunch of “real’ Objects, however draw them as completely see through etc. Connect it to a theme you might be working on at the time.
- Do 20 drawings really fast, of anything, set a timer to 2 minutes and draw a complex thing or series of things, try altering your position to get fresh views and challenge yourself each time. perhaps try one room and move your easel each time.
- Go black and white - Grab a calligraphy brush or similar, and some cheap ink or other media which will flow readily. Now make a series of five images which you work to some sort of pattern you think up or have seen. Try another five until you have about 30 or so images (maybe smallish ones) and see what stand out to you from the series.
- Grab a theme from todays news, and jot down a bunch of ways you might respond to the theme, now draw or jot down how you might tackle the theme in a medium very different to what you currently like or do. Is that an easy process or… how come?
- Take the theme and create a collage from newspaper clippings, explore it like a treasure map and see what you can find by exploring, perhaps try using tracing paper over the original image and taking key shapes and developing an image from there.
- Stylise a complex drawing or photograph, then make successive images which reduce the image to its most basic. How many images did it take? what could you do with the images to make a single artwork?
- You are given a really big commission for a hotel foyer, they want a massive image four metres by four metres. It can be 2D or 3D, what sort of a mock up can you create to give the client an idea of what you might propose. How will you show the scale of it?
- Make a mini exhibition, the sort you might find in shoebox created by a primary school student, now make it for adults… What would you do differently to the Child?
- Get a bunch of old discarded fence palings, what can you make from that? Paint it, Sculpt it, join them together, use them as frames and about a hundred other options.
- Create a series of five similar images, then photocopy them and adjust the settings to create different images, pic out a few you think can be coloured to make the images have a fresh meaning or approach. Or try scanning them and adjusting in am image program, print and colour to suit.
- Write a bad piece of poetry and illustrate it.
- Put one word on a page and decorate around it in a way which is different to the meaning of the word… eg. the word love, decorate it in a violent fashion. Perhaps explore a range of opposite options.
- Grab a roll of cheap paper (we used to get end rolls from a newspaper printer) and roll out a BIG piece 3 metres worth, now draw on it as if it was an important piece of art you are creating… Is it any different to an expensive piece of paper, and what works well image wise for that scale?
What can you make from all this? Lots of things, clearly… Now jot down a few options of your own and share them in the comments section. 
Email me some of the images you create I can list them on here. (Small Jpg’s please.)
March 12, 2011 | Filed Under Art activities and techniques, Creativity Boosters, VCE Studio Arts | Leave a Comment