Creative Splurge

I've been extremely creative recently, but in all the creating I've had less time to blog about it, so this post will be a catch-up for my creative splurge.

I'm taking an online art course on Coursera. So far we've studied various art techniques, Fantastic Art, Mail Art and Portrait Photography. Each week we read about the history of the style of art we're studying and watch a few videos on some of the contempory artists in the field.

I've been opened up to the art of many wonderful artists who I was previously unaware of or haven't thought of since my high school art classes, which were a long time ago! I've been inspired by the Fantastic Art of Henri Rousseau, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Joan Miro, Max Ernst; Mulready envelopes and the Mail Art of of Ray Johnson, Eleanor Antin and Ryosuke Cohen; and the Portrait Photography of Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Sebastiao Salgado and Cindy Sherman.

I've created a few pieces of art following the themes through the course, but am struggling to meet the deadlines for submission of the pieces as I'm so busy with work. I hope to be able to submit at least two pieces for peer review and come out of the other side with a distinction {I'm such a nerd!}.

Here's my Fantastic Art piece - Falling. It represents a dream I commonly have and uses colours that I strongly connect with.

Then there's my Mail Art piece - Memory. Rather than base the piece on an old memory I have, I chose to focus on the neuro-biological aspects of memory which I've learnt about in the Psychology as a Science course I've also been studying recently. Art and Science are both incredibly important to me, so this seemed like an ideal representation of me!

The envelope I made from scratch is decorated with neurons which feature throughout our nervous system and carry signals between the body and the brain. You can also see the neurotransmitters (chemicals) travelling across the synapses (gap), from one neuron to the next.

The insert is shaped like the cross-section of a brain. The front is coloured to show the main regions of the brain. Our memory resides in the Hippocampus and it's location is represented by the white region in the light green section, deep in the centre of the brain.

The back of the insert is covered in a Zentangle pattern which is reminiscent of the network of neurons that reside in the brain.

I'm still working on my Portrait artwork, but hope to share it soon.

Fat Mum Slim's Photo-A-Day challenge continues, and last week the prompts were:
17. Centred
18. Street
19. Currently reading - for my art course!
20. Cute - little lizard in my kitchen

21. Lunchtime - Dal fry and roti
22. Enjoying life - Joanna Rohrback of prancercise.com - sooooo funny!
23. Last - need to buy some new coffee...

I had got a little behind on the Diva's Zentangle challenges. First Laura had challenged us to use Rick and Maria's grid seeds, which I had already fallen in love with and used in four or five Zentangles. I could have just posted links to these pieces, but I really wanted to complete a new piece for this challenge. I ended up choosing two of the grid seeds {at random}, D2 and F2, for my Zentangle.

The second of Laura's challenges was to create a Zentangle without using any patterns that you already know of. The little fishes don't really follow the Zentangle idea of non-representational patterns, but they are cute! I enjoyed this immensely.

Index Card a Day (ICAD) continues.
What I love about this challenge is that I get to try out a whole bunch of techniques and media that are new to me. Also Tammy has given us a bunch of optional prompts in case we get artist's block.

Moleskine restored my faith in them by sending me this package all the way from Milano to Mumbai :D

A few months back I bought my first ever Moleskine and the inside cover was glued in upside down. No biggie - it was still totally useable, and the quirkiness of it added to the appeal for me.

However, Moleskine are big on Quality Control, and in the little booklet that comes along with it were directions to the quality section of their website. There it said they'd send me a replacement product in one month, as mine was defective, so I entered all the details and uploaded the pic and waited. And waited. And waited...

Then nearly two months later this package took me by surprise. I had actually given up all hope of a replacement. What I love about this little book is it's the perfect size for my Zentangles, and my Sakura Microns work so much better on this paper that the handmade paper that made up my previous Zentangle journal.

Finally, I've found a wonderful new Android app {it's new to me} called Shape'd. It's easiest to show you what it can do rather than try to explain...

So cute! I love it :D

Happy creating...
Claire