Welcome!
Each Wednesday check this blog for a strategy, process, or reflection for illustration with the iPad app ProCreate. This Wednesday Wrap Up invites you to consider art as memories.
Inspiration
In my CLmooc FB group, we share many different art prompts found on the Internet and Instagram. Here’s a few:
Now my inspiration lately derives from two places:
- The DS106 Daily Create [About] [My Previous Posts]
- Lisa Bardot’s Making Art Every Day [My Previous Posts]
This week’s Making Art Every Day focuses on things in the kitchen. And that’s the inspiration for today’s Wrap Up.
Wrap Up in Memories
I just can’t see myself drawing things like the kitchen sink or a refrigerator. And the thing I learned from the Daily Create is to break the rules, when needed, to create art– that’s the goal: create art.
Prompts help motivate us when we don’t have a ready topic, but some prompts — though excellent– stump me. So, for these prompts I reached into my memories and found connections that fit the prompt– a detour to find art that fits.
And for you, readers, I implore you to also create art that fits you– by exploring your memories and finding pieces to remember through illustration from which you can share with your family and friends a bit about where you came from.
It’s a great purpose for personal art. Here’s what I mean.
A Bit About Me, Through Art
The Kitchen Sink
Prompt Week: Kitchen — Today: Kitchen Sink
I remember my grandma’s house in rural North Dakota in the late 1950s— the red hand pump at the kitchen sink fascinated me. The only indoor plumbing was that hand pump. 1950s!
I think in the 1960s my uncle’s installed a “water closet” that only Grampa and Gramma could use; the rest of us still used the outhouse. The one by the hives my Grandpa kept.
As a city kid, I still thought milk came from a bottle delivered to our door
Anyway, as I said, the way to the only bathroom was to pass Grampa’s beehives, which were always filled with working bees to both pollinate and for the honey, which Grandma sold, driving first in wagons and then in cars to local gatherings or neighboring farmhouses to those who ordered it from Grandma.
So, I had to pass by the bees to get to the outhouse way in the back by the fields. I just can’t imagine doing this in the winter, but they did, until about 1960, as indicated in the first quote.
Mom always had to encourage me to just keep walking along the path that passed the hives because I was no bother to their working, busy bees that they were.
I did not walk slowly.
And I took the long way back– off to the left away from the hives through the tall prairie grass back to the back of the house where we played– or walked off further away to play on the flatbed trailer that was the “float” in the August Douglas Picnic parades. It was parked in the field next to the one that was plowed, and we played there out of site and out of mind and in trouble for doing so.
And one other thing I did not understand until I visited the Plymouth Living Museum near Boston, MA with my brother’s family.
First, the thing I never understood was when I shared with my mom that we were naming our second son, Jacob.
And she, of Scottish decent, said, “But they will call him Jake.”
I asked what she meant, but true to her not wanting to be negative, she simply replied, “Never mind.”
But at the museum my niece, after noticing the lack of “bathrooms” in the dirt floor one-room 1627 Pilgrim homes, asked, “But where do people go to the bathroom?”
To which the character just looked at her, not knowing that word– “bathroom.”
To which my niece replied, “You know– you eat and it goes through you and…”
And the character laughed, pointing over his shoulder to the woods, “We just go out to the jake.”
So, now I know why mom said to me, “But they will call him jake”– because in her Scottish culture, from her dad, that’s what they called their outhouse.
Oh boy.
Luckily in the 1970s and onward during Jake’s lifetime, that usage was no longer in play.
Crosspost from AskWhatElse Bees By The Jake
About the Kitchen Sink Art: My style was Brenda Bakker, Sketchy Doodles on Skillshare. I create many in this fluid style using her canvas and brushes.
The Refrigerator, Old Style
Prompt Week: Kitchen —- Today: Refrigerator
True story…
My friend’s family moved to another state while we were in high school, so my friend spent the summer at our place.
We were a little more “laid back” than she was. We often used paper towels for our peanut butter toast, but she liked always using plates.
Unfortunately, my father, who spent evenings on the Missouri River fishing, which helped feed us, also kept his minnows in the lower right crisper drawer of our fridge.
Needless to say, when my friend opened the crisper for some lettuce…. well, she did scream.
I felt bad about that.
1968
About the art:
More Sketchy Doodle– I actually love the cattywampus perspective in this refrigerator illustration. It’s ridiculously off kilter everywhere, but here’s the thing: you still know it is a fridge— so, to repeat the Daily Create mantra, — “Make Art, Dammit!” No excuses! Art is your interpretation today in whatever way your imagination sets to it express it. Just do it.
Try It!
So come on out and play! Give it a try! Take a prompt or a memory and connect to your history. Illustrate it simply [or not] and share the story. Perhaps, if you’ve only an IG or Flickr account– start a blog! I highly recommend creating a place to share your art, your process, and your story. Connect with others in ways that put you in charge and not a platform– a place to grow your network of fellow artists.
Another way to connect with others and share your story and art is through art online communities. Here are my two favorite– because they are positive, encouraging, and helpful to everyone. They offer collegial conversation, feedback, classes, brushes, and mostly– a sense of community with art friends.
- Jennifer Nichols Creative Journey
- Lisa Bardot Artmakers Club
I must thank all the artist teachers who inspire me — from Brenda to Daily Create to Lisa Bardot. See links to mentioned artists and my other inspirational mentors here: Artist Resources.
Thanks to all the artist teachers who have inspired me to just give it a try– and I hope you join in.
I look forward to your sharing, and please continue to be a part of the #warmup4art series to learn and enjoy our work together! See my sharing at IG @42Sheri and Twitter @42Sheri.
I wonder, if I draw a line... 