Month: April 2014

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Monster Monday! Week Three

Monster Monday! Week Three:
This week’s supplies: Index cards, magazine and/or colored paper to cut up, scissors, glue sticks and something relaxing. The relaxing thing could be a glass of wine, a cup of tea or just some music you enjoy.
   
 First step, relax.  Try to slip into mellow mode. This is meant to be a fun and enjoyable exercise. You may like making monsters more if you let go of any expectation of a finished object. Give yourself permission to relax and stay in the moment. Maybe you won’t end up with any monsters at all. It’s ok. 
 
No pens or drawing this time. We’re limiting ourselves to collage. I love collage so very much. It’s fun, feels like putting together a puzzle and is less intimidating than drawing or painting. If you don’t like something you glue down on a collage, you can just glue something else over it.
  
Writing, painting. making music, blacksmithing, any creative thing can be processed through collage. You can make a collage on the topic you want to get ideas about and just let the colllage (and ideas) come together on your paper.

Today, we think about monsters!

Like last week, cut up some pictures from a magazine. You can also use pretty paper. I recommend you make lots of different shapes and sizes. You can use shapes from the magazines that appeal to you or just cut things up into abstracts pieces.

 

Glue a large-ish piece down on each postcard.  Rotate the card around until you shape looks like a potential monster body. Using your cut up collage pieces only, make some monsters. You can cut the pieces up more to make them look like what you want them to look like.
I put together all the pieces until I found my monsters and then glued the pieces down. Sometimes when I collage, I put a piece down, glue it and then move onto the next piece. Every way you make a collage is right.

Remember to relax and have fun. if you do end up with some monsters, please share them here or email them to me at Jennifer@JenniferFalkowski.com.
 
 
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More Monsters!

My site was down for a couple of days, there were some gremlins (not monsters!)  in the servers.  At least that’s what I assume it was, I don’t really understand a single thing in the email that customer service sent me.  But it’s up now and I have some monsters to share!  

First from Jo, who was on top of it, she sent them right away.  She said that she didn’t see many monsters but I think she found some truly creative dudes in there.  I love that they are titled, too.  

 

Heidi sent some more monsters in, too.  I love how simple and basic the shapes are.  They still have tons of personality.

And Vicky sent in her week one monsters.  She played around with multiple colors.  She said that too many colors made it harder to find the monsters.  I’m going to try that out, I’ve only used one color.  I love it when people bring in variables I haven’t even considered.  

I hope this inspires more monsters!  I’d love to share them.  You can email them to Jennifer@JenniferFalkowski.com.  

Thanks!

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Monster Monday Week Two!

This week’s supplies: Index cards, magazine to cut up, scissors, glue stick and a black pen. 

Cut up some pictures from a magazine. Try to make them abstract and illogical. Are there colors or shapes that appeal to you?  If so, use those. If not, that’s OK. I don’t always feel it. Cut up a buncha nothin’. That’s good too. Try to make them about 1” by 2” but if a different size works for you, that’s good too. Just keep your index card size in mind. 


Using a glue stick, glue a piece down, rotate your paper and glue on another piece; the only rule is that they must overlap a bit. 

Continue until you stop, maybe three to six pieces per index card.  Repeat on about four index cards. Put them down and walk away. You don’t have to wait as long as you did for your paint blobs because these don’t have to dry. If you are inspired to draw right away, you don’t have to walk away, go for it. 


Find the monster in the shapes you made and draw it in. Again, the goal here is to have fun and to look at a thing in more than one way. You can extend your monster beyond the shapes that the collaged pieces make or you can limit yourself to the collaged shapes.

Here are the other ones I made.  You can tell that I didn’t try for perfection, just to have fun.  


I got some messages from people last week who did the week one Monster Monday exercises but were too shy to share. You can email them to me and I’ll post them anonymously if you want but please, please, please share them somehow.

Jennifer@Jenniferfalkowski.com

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More Monster Pictures for Week One!

Thanks so much to everyone who sent in monster pictures.  Here are the pictures that have shown up so far. It’s not too late to send yours in, there is no due date.  🙂

The first set are from Jenny, who said that she found them really challenging to do.  She just doesn’t see monsters, she sees flowers and pretty things.  I think they are fantastic and I love how she played with colors.

Laurie sent in these incredibly cute monsters.  I love how happy and friendly they all seem, like Laurie herself:

These are by Heidi, who had a blast making them and I think it shows:

Finally, here are some early monsters that I made.  I cut them out and turned them into postcards to mail to friends.

If you feel the need to do something useful with your monsters, Mail Art is always a fabulous option.  Mail them to someone who might appreciate them!

Tomorrow is Monster Monday, Week 2!  I’ll be sending out another fun monster game to play!  I hope you’ll play along.

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First Monster Monday Pictures!

Yay!  Jo sent in these Monster Monday pictures!  Woohoo!  I love them.  

She reported learning as she went, which is –  oh, I don’t know – like, the awesomest thing ever.  It’s a feeling I am always chasing down and my biggest hope to share with others.  So, yay!  

She played with one of my shapes to make her own monsters.  That is so freakin’ clever and imaginative.  Way to be awesome, Jo.  Thank you for taking the leap and playing along.  

If you’ve got some monsters to share, please email them on to Jennifer@JenniferFalkowski.com.  And use this series as an excuse to play, like Jo did.  

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Monster Monday – Week One!

First Monster Monday Exercise! I got the idea for this (and some of the other ones I’ll post down the road) from Carla Sonheim. She is awesome and playful. I’m taking her Year of the Fairy Tale class online this year and am really enjoying it. 

This week’s supplies: Index card, acrylic paint and a black pen. When I sat down to work on this, I realized that I don’t have any index cards, so I used these index card sized alphabetical cards that I found at a thrift shop. Any cheap, smallish paper will do. 

Optional supplies: A small paint brush, water, a paper plate to use as a palate, a rag to clean up with. 


Paint a blob (finger paint or with a paint brush) on an index card. Repeat at least 4 times on other cards, 8 is a lot, 10 is maybe excessive but don’t let that stop you if you are inspired. 

Try not to have any preconceived ideas about what these shapes might end up as. Walk away. Let them dry for a couple of hours. 

After they dry, it will be time to find your monsters.  Turn the cards around and around, looking at them from different angles. Take your time if needed but don’t think it through too much. Allow your intuitive, non-logical mind help you find them, they don’t have to make sense. 

Maybe a running dog thing…
Nope, I don’t see anything here.
Maybe…I’m just going to check one more angle…
Aha!  I see it now…
When you see a creature in your shape, draw it in with a pen. You can extend the shape out or limit yourself to the interior of the blob only. If you just see part of a creature – for instance – only an eye, you can start with that and see if anything appears.
Don’t aim for perfection. You’ll never reach it.  The goal here is to play and have fun.
Please email your Monster Monday pictures to me and I will share them here.
Jennifer@jenniferFalkowski.com. Have fun!
Here are the other monsters I found:
 
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Monster Mondays!

Ok.  I keep having ideas of projects I want to share. They seem like they would really be fun to do online.  But, I know I also have this tendency to jump into things without much thought.  So, pretending to be a grown up on the inside (my outer grownup shows more), I’ve been choosing to wait, give the idea a few days of thought to see if there are any holes.  Inevitably, I find hole or two or three and think:  Whew, I’ll just keep that to myself, looks like I dodged a bullet there…I suppose.  Or maybe I didn’t trust myself and the idea lost its steam.  It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

So, I’ve had another idea and this time, I’m jumping in.  I’ve started it already on my Facebook page but I want to share it here too.  You can play along in either or both places.

I’m calling it:  Monster Monday.  

Monster Monday is a fun way to introduce some creativity into your life.  I’ll send out one monster related, creativity art type thing to do every Monday until I stop.  At this moment, I have 13 ideas to share.  The exercises are fun, non competitive, meant to be freeing and, did I mention, fun.  More information is coming – you guessed it – next Monday.  🙂

Please, share this with your friends, your acquaintances and, maybe, that artsy looking woman you just passed on the street.

I ask that you share pictures of stuff you made on my Facebook page.  It’s a public page, so you don’t have to be a Facebook member to access it.  You can also email them to me and I’ll share them for you.  Here and on Facebook so you won’t miss anything. 

Why monsters?  Because monsters don’t have to follow rules like real animals.  They don’t have to have two arms and two legs.  They can have as many or as few as you like.  You make up the rules that help us recognize them as beings.  At least one eye?  A mouth or eyebrows?  If you are inspired, feel free to change your own rules.  If some conditions are met, maybe you can change others.  If the mouth is saying MONSTER, maybe you can leave off the eyes.  Play around and see.  Monsters can have animal like attributes like wings or fins but they don’t have to.  They may have leaves or wheels.  

If you aren’t happy with what you’ve made, put it aside and start over…or don’t.  But please don’t throw them away.  Not yet, anyway.  Tuck them away for a week or two.  Then take them out and peek at them, can you see some attributes you can change to make them more monster-y?  Maybe you just want to cut them up and remake them into other monsters.  Or, maybe you just truly don’t like them.  You don’t have to.  At his point, if you want to, just give them the heave-ho.  This is supposed to be fun and not stressy.  

I’ll keep the supplies you need simple and cheap.  It’s probably stuff you have around the house. I recommend you make your monsters on index cards because they rock.  They are both easy to find and cheap.  

Supply list (keeping in mind that I may come up with some more ideas that need different supplies later):  Index cards, paper, a black pen, a color marker or two or three, acrylic paint, maybe a paint brush but you can paint with your fingers too, a glue stick, tape (washi, electrical and/or masking, as long as the tape you choose isn’t transparent), a magazine and/or pretty paper that you can cut up, which means scissors, and finally, some music to listen to.  

I hope you decide to play along, next week:  Same monster time, same monster channel.