Right Brain Redux: Day 14 of 30-day Creativity Challenge

Right Brain Redux Day 14: Bluebelly the Pirate

Started today out in the woods with Mini-Me, hunting some 'Seng (Ginseng). Didn't find any this time, but still had a good time. Today's Challenge projects were:

Jess: Create a new Pandora station, then create a piece of art inspired by the third song that plays.

Kev: Finger paint with the boys and post the results.

It wasn't hard to get Mini-me on board with the finger painting. He went to town as soon as we sat down. Little took a little more convincing. First he wanted to wave the paper around. Then as soon as there was paint on his finger, he had to taste it. Must've been pretty bad, based on the face he made and the fact that he didn't try to eat it anymore. After I put his finger on the paper and showed him he could make a streak, he lit up. He was pointing at colors that he wanted and holding his hand out for me to wipe when he got too much paint on it.

Mini-me finished his piece solo while I supervised Little on his first one. Then all three of us got our hands on the third piece (literally. All 3 of our handprints are on it). I even got Jess some of Little's handprints in her sketchbook before we were done. Then, Bluebelly the Pirate made his first appearance. Shortly thereafter, he began to Hulk out and then went for a scrub. But not until he painted MY belly, too.

Mini-me never said what he was painting, but to me it looks like the woods when the leaves start to turn. Which we did see one tree already changing color this morning, so maybe that was in his head still.

Who knows what Little was painting, but he was very deliberate with his color choices and placement on his solo piece. And belly.

Jess: Create a new Pandora station, then create a piece based on the third song that plays.

My song was "Freedom" by Warr Acres. This song brought into my mind the thought of "Crying out to God". So I looked for verses that fit that feeling. I came across "In my distress I called to the Lord". The image I chose was of a hand, reaching out for help. I placed the verse within the hand. Outside of the hand I added the verse "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked way, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. 2 Chr 7:14". After this, I needed to look up the reference/ location of the scripture on the hand, because I couldn't remember it.

It turns out this phrase appears in 5 different places in the Bible, giving me one verse reference for each finger on the hand. I did NOT plan this. God is amazing.

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Right Brain Redux: Day 8 of 30-day Creativity Challenge

Right Brain Redux: Day Ate

Eighth day of the challenge. Gone all day long for Dr appointments. But that's life. So today, Jess pulled "Recreate a childhood art project" while I drew "Create a piece of art inspired/ based on an everyday object".

Jessica told me that when she was a kid, she'd take a ruler or an object, place it on the paper, and draw around it to fill the paper with geometric shapes. Then, she'd take out the crayon box and her self-imposed design parameter was to use every single color to fill in the shapes she'd made.

Tonight's project is a recreation of this using circles and restraint (hey, it's supposed to be a challenge, right?).  Four different sizes of circles were overlapped to create a series of curves. Color was applied with watercolor pencils and brushed smooth. Some arcs were left white for negative space effects. Personally, I love the end result she came out with. I want to keep it.

Now, for myself (Kev), I actually had an idea for what I would do for this project when Jess drew it a few days back. I would have preferred to create this digitally, but Photoshop isn't a current option. So I went with gouache and pencil. I haven't worked with gouache much, but I think I like it. I laid down my shapes in pencil, then painted over and tightened back up with watercolor pencils. I actually agonized over my color choices for a while, knowing that once I put it to the paper there was no going back. Digital doesn't have that sort of commitment. It was sort of fun to just go with it, knowing that there was no turning back. Kind of like jumping off the bridge into the river (don't tell my mom I did that when I was 12... 30 years ago and I'd still catch it for that).

Oh yeah, my inspiration was a fork and plate. I had the thought of them so close up, they were just curves. This is another project I'd like to revisit later on. Maybe in a medium I am more experienced/ familiar with.

22 more projects to go. Ain't this fun? (Big grin goes here)

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Right Brain Redux

Right Brain Redux

(30-Day Creativity Challenge)

Redux- adjective 1. brought back; resurgent; 1650-60; < Latin: returning (as from war or exile)

In honor of back-to-school, Jessica and I have decided to subject ourselves to a creative experiment. I know, School started yesterday and we are a day behind. Trust me, that's early for me.

With so many things going on in our family life over the past year (Moving to a new house, moving to a new state, Starting a Kids' Church Ministry from scratch, Remodeling a house in the new state, moving into the new house in the new state, major surgery-- all while juggling the rest of the usual stuff of living and working and raising two awesome autistic boys.) our creative lives have really taken a hit. We've tried to eke out time to art here and there, but often we just haven't been able to find it. Or we're too worn out from chasing a toddler who has decided he will only answer to "Hurricane" for the day.

So here's the challenge we've set for ourselves; together, we have created a list of creative challenges to be performed one per day over the next thirty days. There are about forty in all and have been printed on slips of paper which are folded and placed into Challenge Jars.

Each of us has our own jar with the exact same set of papers, but to keep it interesting we will each select one challenge per day from our own Challenge Jar. This way, we probably won't be doing the same challenge on the same day, but we should have done most of the same projects over the course of the challenge. The projects cover everything from drawing and painting to photography and writing. One day I might have to write a haiku on a subject chosen by my son while Jessica draws a friendly robot or finger paints with the boys.

The randomness of the challenge is designed to flex our creative muscles and give us a workout. The projects are simple enough to complete in the course of a day. The one-day deadline is to keep us moving. We will be posting our challenge for you to see each morning, and the results each evening. You can feel free to join in and try your hand at each day's challenge if you'd like.

It's gonna be a crazy-fun month!

Kevin

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