Vol. 2, No. 304, October 31, 2017

2304 - Reflections.

Bonus Day:

Share one thing you learned during the past 30-days of your Creative Sprint.

The key to creativity is sharing. When you share your art you get feedback, whether or not you want it. The feedback then helps you to grow, boosting you confidence and encouraging you to keep going. If I didn't share my art, I am positive I would have stopped my daily creative challenges a long  time ago, because I would not have had the motivation to continue. It was same with the Creative Sprint, sharing my art made every piece like a collaboration. I got feedback and used to to gain new ideas and sometimes to go back and revise something I had already made.

I chose to make a flower for today's reflection project, because I need it for a project example in Grade 3 tomorrow. I will be sharing this flower with all of my students and undoubtedly through my "critiques" with them, I will find things that I could have done differently to make it better. Creativity is a constant learning process and once you stop creating, you stop learning. So, don't give up no mater how daunting a task seems.

Vol. 2, No. 303, October 30, 2017

2303 - Celebrate!

DAY 30  Create a trophy or another type of award to celebrate your Creative Sprint efforts!

I wanted to create another chalk stencil example for my Grade 3 classes, so I made one using a trophy shaped stencil. After all of the printing was done, I took a picture and used my camera's photo editor to add a plaque to the main trophy. I can't believe how quickly these 30 days have gone.

Vol. 2, No. 302, October 29, 2017

2302 - Conversations and Revisions.

DAY 29  Ask someone whose opinion you respect to select something from your Creative Sprint work for you to revise or improve upon, today.

I usually respect my sister's opinion, so I asked her to chose one of my artworks for revision. After getting her decision, I wasn't sure I respected her opinion any more. She chose Day 15 - Take a walk outdoors and create with materials you find in nature. Today was a wet, slightly blustery day and I wasn't excited about the prospect of going outside. For the sake of my art, I sucked it up and went on a short walk around my flower garden. In the garden I found some pretty red leaves, golden seed pods, and pinecones. I combined all of these to make a beautiful flower on the sidewalk. This "revision" of my original nature walk was much better!

Vol. 2, No. 301, October 28, 2017

2301 - Never Say Never.

DAY 28  Do something you’ve never done before today.

I had to think really hard to come up with something I've never done. I was stumped so I headed to set work hoping something would come to me. It did! As I was spray painting, I hit me, I've never tagged a building. I chickened out of that, but it turns out that until today I had never spray painted outside with snow on the ground before nor had I spray painted fabric. This is a fan that we covered with feathery fabric and then I painted gold.

Vol. 2, No. 300, October 27, 2017

2300 - Use Your Skull.

DAY 27  Make something inspired by what's inside your head right now.

For about a week, they have been predicting that we in Centeral Minnesota would get out first snowfall of the season today. When I went to bed last night it hadn't started yet, so when I woke up, the first and really only thing on my mind was snow. Of course, they were right and the grass was coated in fluffy white ice, aka snow.

By time I had gotten home from work the majority of the snow had melted,but there was still enough to make a small snowman. I decorated it with some berries, berry juice, dried flower casings, and a leaf, plus the stick arms. I placed my snowman on my front steps. I'll have to see how long he lasts.

Vol. 2, No. 299, October 26, 2017

2299 - Treat Yourself.

DAY 26 Create a diagram of your own recipe for happiness.

I had this prompt back in January as part of the #64MillionArtists challenge, so this time I decided to put a different spin on it. I began my morning with a Facebook post, "Finish this sentence. 'Happiness is...'" I used the responses from family and friends to create a word cloud. I didn't have a ton of free time today, so I let worditout.com generate the word cloud for me.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

Vol. 2, No. 298, October 25, 2017

2298 - Inspired By.

DAY 25  Make an homage to or recreate another Sprinter's work by searching the Creative Sprint hashtag or Facebook group postings.

As I browsed #creativesprint on Facebook, I was intrigued by the accordion Post-it "flowers" of Patrick Held. I read the caption with the photograph and found that these "flowers" were his quick rendition of Lotus Blossoms given as gifts in Hindu, Egyptian, and Asian cultures.

Inspired by Patrick's work, I decided to use a Post-it to make and origami Lotus Blossom of my own.

Vol. 2, No. 297, October 24, 2017

2297 - #UnitedNationsDay.

DAY 24  It's #UnitedNationsDay! Find inspiration today in a tradition of a culture other than your own. Today is my dad's birthday, so id decided to look up birthday traditions around the world. I found 2 traditions that inspired my work. The first comes from Jamaica where birthday boys and girls are "antiqued." or coated with flour, by family and friends. The second comes from Canada where birthday boys and girls get their noses greased, usually with butter, to ward off bad luck. I used butter to draw a cake on a paper bag, then I used flour to antique it. As I write this I realize that it would have been even cooler if I had drawn the cake with my nose, but that would have been messy and a lot more time consuming.

Vol. 2, No. 296, October 23, 2017

2296 - Listen Up!

DAY 23 Make something inspired by a sound you hear today.

I didn't hear sounds today, I heard noise. A lot of noise. The noise began with my alarm. Then the dinging in my car reminding me that it needed to be serviced so badly that I had to switch vehicles with my mom. Next was the radio on my way to work, I didn't mind this noise. This was followed by the clicking of computer keys as I set up my new classroom computer. Then came my classes all 5 were obnoxiously noisy today. When I left work my head was so full of noise that I just had to shut off the radio. After a short quiet brake at home, I went to play practice where I was subjected to more students yapping and more loud music.

My drawing is a rough interpretation of how my head feels.

Vol. 2, No. 295, October 22, 2017

2295 - No Filter.

DAY 22 Create something inspired by a piece of spam e-email you have recently received.

One email that I found in my spam folder said that it was from Sephora. It said that I was preselected to test health and beauty samples. I was inspired to create a beauty supply tower using my sister's make-up stash. Some of the make-up was even from Sephora.

Vol. 2, No. 294, October 21, 2017

2294 - Telephone.

DAY 21 Ask someone to tell you a story about their day. Make something inspired by their story!

I asked a friend to tell me a story. The first thing they told me was "Well today I caught a unicorn." That was the whole story. I figured if I was going to be lied to, they could at least make it slightly believable. So I prodded them for more.

The next story was much more believable, mostly because it was true. I won't tell you the story, but I will tell you that the tree is made of unicorn horns and the lines protruding from the tree make a rainbow. It is hard to make an accurate rainbow when all you have is a pieve of notebook paper and a pencil. Also, every detail in the picture is an element of the story that I was told.

Vol. 2, No. 293, October 20, 2017

2295 - In Between.

DAY 20 Look for a small space between two things (i.e. a crack in the sidewalk, a door that’s ajar, the negative space between two items on a shelf) and use that as your starting point.

I used the small slit for the cords on the window blinds as my starting spot. From here, I recycled a paper shopping bag and made butterfly wings, using the slit as the body. I came up with a million other ideas which could have been awesome, but I didn't have the energy to execute anything more than the butterfly.

Vol. 2, No. 292, October 19, 2017

2292 - Bright Ideas.

DAY 19 Make something that lights up. Work with an existing light source or put a small electric light or candle inside of something you make.

Today my sister, her fiance, and I went to Vala's Pumpkin Patch. We had fun taking in all the sites, including a corn maze. While watering the maze it hit me, how cool would it be to make a corn husk torch. It is a fun fall decoration and it is fitting that I am in the Corn Husker state. After I broke the corncob out, I dropped some flameless tea lights in the husk, then spent 20 minutes trying to get a decent picture.

Vol. 2, No. 291, October 18, 2017

2291 - Replacements.

DAY 18  Take something you use every day and remake it using completely different materials. I decided to make an origami phone. After finding folding instructions online, I used my trusty Crayola Markers to deck out the phone. I replicated my phone as much as possible. For the white, I used correction fluid. It was a little tricky to write with which is why the time is 11:11.

Vol. 2, No. 290, October 17, 2017

2290 - Exquisite Corpse.

DAY 17 Invite two people (family members, co-workers, sprinters) to create an Exquisite Corpse today. Not sure what that means? Follow the instructions below!

What is an Exquisite Corpse?

Artists in the Surrealist movement of the early twentieth century made up a creative game that involved group collaboration called Exquisite corpse. They would take turns adding images or words to a single folded page so that they could not see what came before or only had just enough to continue. The end results were surprising and funny and allowed for unusual connections that might not normally have been made. This project gives you a chance to get the benefits of random play and spending time being creative with others. HOW TO DO IT: 1. Find one or more people to work with you. 2. Each person, including you, should fold a piece of paper into quarters as shown. 3. Write the words “head,” “torso,” “legs,” and “feet” in order, one on each section. 4. Start at the bottom or top and draw a head or feet of your choice. Extend the lines that reach the fold just slightly over it so that the next person has a starting place to work from. 5. Fold the paper so that your work can’t be seen by the next person. 6. Pass the pieces back and forth or around in a circle until all spaces have been used up and then reveal the end results to the group. For a really surreal result, leave off the names of the parts of the body and let people draw whatever they want as long as it visually connects between sections. 7. There many variations on Exquisite Corpse so feel free to make it your own!

I had a busy day planned and I wasn't sure when I would find time to collaborate. So when I checked Facebook and saw an invitation for a digital collaboration I jumped on it. My collaboration group included Andy Garrabrant (he coordinated the collaboration), Rachel Welsh de Iga, and Catherine Mehrl Bennett. We agreed to make a much loose interpretation of Exquisite Corpse. Rather than forming a corpse, we made abstract compositions. We each chose a subject matter and materials and created a square composition. My composition was a chalk stencil print inspired by National Pasta Day. I chose to do a chalk stencil print because that is my next Grade 3 lesson and I needed an example.

We then shared an image of our compositions and each of us created a new work of art incorporating each composition. It was fun to see how different each completed work is, considering they all came from the same 4 images. When I created my work of art, repeated each image, rotating it every time and then played with  the tonal balance of each image, giving them all a greenish tint.

Vol. 2, No. 289, October 16, 2017

2289 - #NationalDictionaryDay.

DAY 16 It's #NationalDictionaryDay! Learn a new word and create something that represents it.

I didn't have easy access to a physical dictionary, so I took to Google, searching Word of the Day. My favorite came from the New York Times, rivulet: a small stream.  As I sat at play practice tonight, I used a scrap of blue painters tape to roll a stream and laid it in the crevice of a rock wall, like a stream.

Vol. 2, No. 288, October 15, 2017

2288 - Nature Walk.

DAY 15 Take a walk out of doors today and create something from the materials that you find available in nature.

Today was a decent fall day, the sun was shining and it was almost 60 degrees. I woke up this morning, read my Creative Sprint prompt and had every intention to go for a walk to collect a rainbow of leaves to make a collage like the one I made last year. Only this time I was going to press the leaves and then decoupage them on a canvas, making some great wall art. Unfortunately, my warm blankets and reruns of Will & Grace were calling me and by time I got motivated to do my project, it was dark, which meant no actual nature walk. Instead, I collected the leaves that were blocking the sewer grate at the end of my drive way and laid them, in the shape of a mushroom, in the lit spot in my yard. I chose a mushroom because today is National Mushroom Day.

Vol. 2, No. 287, October 14, 2017

2287 - Super Duper.

DAY 14 Create a new superhero. What are their special abilities? What does the costume look like?

Today was another Set Work Saturday, which meant 8.5 hours at the theater. Don't get me wrong, I love doing it, it's just a ton of work and it doesn't leave a lot of room for other things, like Creative Sprint. So I got creative, and based my superhero off of the work I already did, so while I don't have a picture of the superhero, I have a picture of her work. When I got home and was catching up on Facebook, I came across a post for a t-shirt "Art is my superpower." It couldn't have been more fitting.

My superhero is Pollock, she is a painter and Art is her superpower. Among other things, she has the uncanny ability to find half used cans of paint and combine them to make a new color, matching it, almost exactly to an existing color. The pictures show some paint she mixed. The shinier color was made a few weeks ago, when is ran out, she was forced to put her superpower to make more. As you can see she got the right color, unfortunately, she didn't quite get the right amount of shine, making the second batch very flat.

Pollock's costume is old jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, Crocs, and of course an apron with pockets. Her apron is drizzled with paint resembling a Jackson Pollock painting. She is always ready with her red-lanyard paint can opener and a stir stick.

Vol. 2, No. 286, October 13, 2017

2286 - Friday the 13th.

DAY 13 Make the spookiest thing you can!

The spookiest thing I could think of during my brainstorm session was a dream that I had had a while back. I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought I saw a large bearded man standing in my doorway. I was so spooked that I turned on the light and then went around the house to make sure I was alone.

I made a collage to my project incorporating a photograph of the end of my bed. Instead of drawing a bearded man, I went with a ghost. If I had had more time, I would have made the pop-up of the ghost more prominent.

Vol. 2, No. 285, October 12, 2017

2285 - Let's Go Retro.

DAY 12 Make something inspired by a favorite childhood toy.

I can't really pick a favorite toy from my childhood, as there were lots that I enjoyed. However one toy that stands out in my mind right now is a large red wooden barn with plastic farm animals that was at Granny and Papa's house. Of all the animals we had, my favorites were either the pigs (as there were mamas and babies) or the horses (they had trading cards that told you about each breed). 

Today, fittingly, happens to be National Farmer's Day. So in honor of all of the farmers out there, and my favorite toy, I drew a picture that will be used as a project example for my 4th graders on their next project. The project is Out of Proportion. Students have to choose a living thing and draw it out of proportion in comparison to the rest of the picture. 

I drew a barn that looks similar to my toy barn and an extra large pig with even larger ears. I put the pig in a corn field to help with the proportion exaggeration.

Vol. 2, No. 284, October 11, 2017

2284 - Stop, Collaborate, and Listen.

DAY 11 Work together with another Creative Sprinter, today.

As far as I know, there aren't any Creative Sprinters near me, so I turned to social media to find someone looking to collaborate. The first invitation to collaborate that I came across was from KL McGhee. KL is from the UK and we have been following each other's work on Instagram for awhile now. KL's collaboration suggestion was that everyone design a door in the frame that she provided and then leave the door somewhere for others to find.

I decided to make my door National Day themed. One of today's National Days was National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work Day. So I decorated my door with little teddy bear silhouettes, I even put in a teddy bear shaped door knob. I left the door in the corner of the bulletin board outside my classroom in Waverly.

Vol. 2, No. 283, October 10, 2017

2283 - Public Art.

DAY 10 Create in a public place and leave it there for others to find.

Conveniently I am a public school teacher and today I needed to put up another wing display like the one I used for my project a few weeks ago. I work in 3 schools and all of my students in all of the schools did the same project, learning about Kelsey Montague and making beautiful and unique feathers. This meant that I needed to make 3 wing displays. With conferences on Thursday, I wanted to get the second display up today, so I couldn't have asked for a better prompt.

Today's wing display is right inside the front doors of Winsted Elementary School. I like the shape of these wings much more than the first set and I can't wait to see how the 3rd set turns out. One thing I don't like about this set of wings is the placement. The best spot in the school, where it would be seen by the largest number of people was right below the fire alarm, which meant that I couldn't hang the paper all the way to the ceiling and the wings couldn't be as tall.

Vol. 2, No. 282, October 9, 2017

2282 - World Post Day.

DAY 9 Today is World Post Day! Create something inspired by the Postal Service and their work. For some additional inspiration, here is a poem by Charles W. Eliot. These words are inscribed in granite at the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum in Washington, DC.

Messenger of Sympathy and Love Servant of Parted Friends Consoler of the Lonely Bond of the Scattered Family Enlarger of the Common Life Carrier of News and Knowledge Instrument of Trade and Industry Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations.

In celebration of World Post Day and National Sneaker Day, I created a postage stamp featuring a sneaker. I didn't have any color supplies on hand, so it is a black and white stamp, but other than the distortion of the shoe, I like how it turned out.