Page-A-Week

Last week, I taught two of my PAINT YOUR HEAD workshops, one on Thursday in Williamsburg, at Walls Alive, and one to Art Teachers (talk about preachin' to the choir!) in Norfolk, at Old Dominion University. Winter Workshop time for Tidewater Virginia Art Educators! It was a blast. I always learn from others, and it is such a great time to be able to share knowledge, methods, media, and inspirations, not to mention, the biggie - ENCOURAGEMENT! In that vein (see how I work vampires into almost everything?), I am going to start posting a PAGE-A-WEEK. An INSPIRATION page. I will still post my usual yammering and updates, and artwork and art journal pages, and works on wood and ATCs -whew, baby - BUT, I thought this would be a great way to start sharing some idea starters for those who'd like a jumpstart for their projects. Or heck, just some eye candy. Here's the first one - I was thinking about how we can use our trash for treasure, and grouping together things I've saved which most people throw away - teabags, candy wrappers, stamps, Starbucks cards, hotel keys - and somehow I can sit down and make them all relate. You can, too. Try it! Gather a bunch of stuff you've been saving (or, start saving this week), and sit down to see how you can group it either by subject matter or color, or theme, or style . . . and do a "tour" through your piece. Everything in today's piece relates back to the beginning, in that you can find more than one piece which contains several things in common with other pieces on the page. It's sorta like that game where you have to take the last letter of the last person's word and start a new one - from the Hershey wrapper I got dark chocolate, red, silver, and gold, and found it in some beautiful papers I had in my files . . . and from those your eyes can jump back to the birds, to the Santos art, to the turquoise jewelry stamps, to the Starbucks card . . . you get my drift. Enjoy! Hope this gets your juices going! This collage work I've done in my own art journaling is informing all my gallery work now - and given it a texture it didn't have before. peace, y'all - trl, aka The Laughing Redhead