Here we are. Week 12/12 of my weekly creative challenges. As my classes are coming to an end for the semester, I will be taking a break from posting.. BUT, the summer and sunshine only bring the desire to create, so I will be back ASAP with some more challenges

For this final week, I challenge you to create a self portrait of yourself. Don’t include any descriptor words, just draw yourself wearing your favourite colours. Write your name at the bottom, and give yourself a background that you will enjoy. Let yourself shine through your drawing and show us the essence of you!

For my self portrait, I decided to show off my rosy cheeks and messy pink hair. Pink is my favourite colour to dye my hair, however, to be as truthful as possible – I also included my brown roots (because i’m so lazy at consistently dying my hair!) I am pictured in a band T-shirt of my favourite band, Modern Baseball (aka MOBO). The flowers in the back are my two favourite colours, pink and green, and I wanted to capture some fun groovy energy in my portrait, because that’s how I want my ideal self to be!

Draw a picture of yourself. Post it down below. What are you like? Whats your essence?

This week, I found a stack of old National Geographic magazines that I had taken from my grandparents house. I have fond early memories of their bookshelves being filled with Nat Geo because they had gotten a monthly subscription sent to their house. Remember when we subscribed to newspapers and magazines and they arrived directly to our door?? Those were the days. Anyways.. I came across a few pictures and wanted to save for some type of craft. While tearing out the picture, I accidentally tore it in half. I was bummed, and then I thought of an idea.

I glued the half picture into my notebook, and i drew the rest of the picture myself (or my version of it!) After pencilling that in, I went over it with watercolour paints and acrylic. To finish, I outlined with sharpie and called it a day. I actually enjoy how they turned out!:

Sometimes, I don’t want to paint anything particular. My favourite part about painting or drawing or anything is the colours. Some people focus on the linework and shading, I focus on the colour scheme. The thing is, I can’t really decide on which colour sometimes because i just… love them al! I wish all colours would go together equally, but it usually ends up in chaos (just take a look at my blog! I started out with the colour scheme of blue, red, and yellow – but i’ve now just decided to go with what colours make my heart happy in the moment that i’m using them. I like chaos is beautiful, but there is something to be said about *organized chaos* !

To practice, I decided that this week I would work on picking a colour, and getting the most out of different variations of the same colour .. also known as … monochrome painting!

I couldn’t decide on any one colour, so I went down the line of the rainbow, and tried to make different shades on each page! My favourites ended up being the Pink and Purple pages that I did in the beginning. Adding white to anything will take a colour and make it lighter (obviously!) but it also makes it different enough to contrast!

Your challenge this week…

Pick a Colour! Any Colour! But stick to it. See how many variations you can make with that one colour, and use it to make a picture – or just vibe out on the page and see where your brush strokes take you!

Pals, I have an obsession. A brain teaser, a form of meditation, a silly activity, a template for countless works of arts. You may have heard of it, it’s called “Blind Contour Drawings”

A Blind Contour Drawing is when you stare at a reference picture and attempt to recreate it on paper WITHOUT looking down at your paper. I found myself instinctively looking down at times, it’s really quite hard not to! The trick is so just go with the flow. Try it a few times to get a feel for it, and then really try to focus and connect the pen and paper to the image you are seeing in your mind. It’s actually quite meditative!

I reccommend that you begin with an easy object like a plant. Do it over and over and over again and see your progress! It’s pretty cool.

Another strategy is to attempt to redraw portraits of yourself or your friends. The less you think and the more confident you are with the lines you draw (and the less you care about it not looking exactly like the drawing) the better they turn out! It’s like an introduction to abstract art without meaning it to be!

Ok shes/hes and theys… The history of my photo collaging goes waaaay back with me. For almost 12 years, I had a photo collage of magazine pictures taped onto my door on my childhood bedroom (see example below). I don’t recommend letting an 11 year old do what I did, because when you peel everything off 12 years later, you peel off the layers of the door as well. Oops.

If you want to proceed with good old fashioned paper and cutting and pasting, I support you. Don’t do it on anything permanent unless you’re feeling crazy, but your Auntie Sam supports you no matter what. Just don’t tell your parents I enabelled you photo collaging onto things that they will have to deal with in the future.

If you’re looking for a cleaner way to photo collage – fear not! I have a solution for you (located below in “Variation #2)…

Here are the materials you will need for this week, whatever path you may choose.

Variation #1

• Paper/Magazine/Photos
• Scissors
• Gluestick
• A medium to paste everything that is not a door. Maybe a poster board or a sketchbook?

Variation #2

• Smartphone
• Ability to access the App Store
• Download the app PicsArt or Pic Collage.
  • Use the “Freestyle” function

When I came into work the other day, I didn’t realize that I would fulfill my weekly creative activity while getting paid to make a wedding gift for my dear friend! My coworker brought in a card and some bouquets of flowers to gift to our other coworker who was getting married on the weekend! I was just coming off of my lunch break, when I was given a task. Make a wrist corsage out of the floral scraps that were provided. Oh, and it has to be done within the hour.

My first thought was – wait, how to people make wrist corsages? I realized that I had to wing it and work with what I had on hand. Thankfully, there is a daycare that runs out of the room that I work in sometimes, so there were arts and craft supplies kicking around! I grabbed a few pipe cleaners and went to work.

This week, try and find some flowers in your neighbourhood. Arrange them in a way you can wear them, or just arrange them into a bouquet!