weeklyartlesson.com

This is your moment to jump the wall that defines the edge of your comfort zone.

Last week we had an easy lesson on drawing palm trees.   We learned to pick up a pen and doodle palm trees in margins and on scrap paper.   Now a new challenge….. send it to me and I’ll put it on last week’s post for the world to see.

Showing your work is part of the healthy cycle of creating. The creative cycle isn’t complete unless you show your work.  Refrigerators count just as much as museums, but, if you choose the frig,  get a noncompeting magnet because presentation matters.  Don’t worry, be healthy.

• Send a photo of your palm tree drawings to Lillian@rockfire.com.
  

  Can you sense the steps from the last lesson in this acrylic palm tree painting. ( Lillian Kennedy 5"x 5")

• I’ll take care of cropping, correcting exposure, etc.
• Include your city and state.
• Include your name or leave your drawing anonymous.
• It would be interesting if you included your profession – optional.
• If you have a website and include it, I will make a link for you and that way the world will have another doorway to your site.

Follow these  five simple tips and learn to draw palm trees – symbols of relaxation, warmth, and beach vacations.

Keep scrap paper nearby when you make phone calls,  and if you get put on hold you can have a briefly drawn trip to the beach.

The no-sweat art process - painting palms from the pool in Puerto Rico.

This lesson was planned while   in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago.  The Kit in a Baggie worked great even in the pool.

Ready?  Get some old paper and a pencil.

Six Steps to Drawing Palm Trees

1. Make an angled organically wiggly line.  This is the trunk. Any little kink or twist adds life.     Put a small inverted triangle on the top.  This is the growing center for the palm fronds. You don’t need to do this, but it helps to stay organized.  Remember, palms don’t have limbs growing out at various places on the trunk – all the growth  happens from this center at the top.

Click to enlarge for the steps to drawing simple palm trees. media: dry erase board

2. Make an imperfect oval over the top of the trunk.   At this stage your palms will look like drunken lollipops.   Make as many as you like  (it’s your imagination after all).

3. Draw a sloping line that angles down towards the same side of the paper that the palm is leaning (palms lean towards the sea) – this is your beach.  Next make a low horizontal line to represent the horizon line / the level line where the ocean meets the sky.  Starting at your little triangle, make curved lines all around and let them extend to the oval.  These lines represent one edge of the palm fronds.

figuring out how to explain palm tree drawing to you (and having fun in Puerto Rico)

4. Draw the other edge of the palm fronds.  Each frond is tapered and makes a long sword shape. See if you can make one frond come out towards you.     Put a squiggly line in the water and two little vertical lines on the beach.  Now you can see yourself walking with someone else (just erase that other line if you want some alone time).          Sigh.

5. Make a line down the center of  the fronds and draw lines from the center to the edge slanting toward the tips to represent the individual tapered leaves.  Add some  little ovals for the heads.    Erase the oval that you used as a guide.

Repeat as needed for a mini break.

click to read some of my on-location notes for this lesson - I wasn't JUST hanging out on the beach

PALM TREES detail: watercolor and gouache, Lillian Kennedy

1/25/12 Ilene Ruben in PA just sent this response to the lesson. Something in the news makes me think she imagined a beach on an island off Italy. If you want to see your drawing on the WeeklyArtLesson, email me at lillian@rockfire.com and attach it - if you don't see it up soon, contact me again because lots of things get accidentally neglected.

New Year's Toast - Here's to being sweet and beautiful on the outside while staying crunchy and wholesome on the inside.

Here’s to a year of fearless drawing and painting! 

How to make an artsy New Year’s Toast:

How to make the New Year's toast

1. Toast  bread.

2. Spread with frosting.

3. Use gel food colors and simply paint into the frosting.

4. Vodka is used to thin the gel food colors.

5. Regular art  brushes naturally create a beautiful line in the frosting ( I used Silver Ruby Satin brushes).

5. Mistakes are easy to correct  – scrape off with a butter knife and repaint – or eat!

How I came to make the toast:

1. Asked to paint wildflowers on a very important cake and not having a clue how to do it, I wanted to start practicing immediately .

2. Research was done on the internet and art supplies were bought at the supermarket early New Year’s day.

3. Bread was available and somewhat close to cake in consistency.

I love puns, but didn’t plan this one.

Solar lights seen from the studio window celebrating the New Year with snow party hats

Instead of “May all your dreams come true in 2012″, this is my wish for you…  “May you have the tools to turn your art dreams into goals so that you can achieve what you really desire!”.

Celebrate the New Year with a well thought out creative goal!  It’s the traditional time for goal setting, so let’s go over some tips that will help you to accomplish what you really want with your art.
The primary concept is that goals aren’t the same as a Santa wish list.  Goal setting can be a practical exercise in planning and getting in touch with your deeper / higher self so that you can … (you finish the sentence).

Goal setting can be a bone chilling time of reckoning. Well, maybe it won't be so bone chilling if you don't sit here, come on inside to the studio.

1. Goal Statement.  Define your goal as clearly as possible in a sentence.  For this exercise, choose  one (relatively small) art  goal that you think you would like to achieve.  Hand write the answers and keep adjusting them until they feel just right!
2. Set a deadline.   Also write the current date and the amount of time you have before the due date.  Without a deadline, it’s not a true goal.
   
3. Are you DETERMINED  or FANTASIZING?  Write down the answer after really thinking about the question. We all have loads of vague dreams.  Dreams usually don’t come true without a lot of work.  If a new goal comes in, something else may have to go.  Don’t fool yourself – reset the goal  if it’s too much or you are not able to make a full commitment to go for it.
4. Problems anticipated.   Obstacles stand between you and successful completion of the project (or else it would be done already).  In this section brainstorm  and write down what might derail you.  Make a list of possible (sometimes unavoidable) problems that you think might come up.  Think about possible solutions for each potential issue.  That way you won’t be completely thrown when you run into trouble.
5.  Measurable objectives: sub-goals with deadlines.  When you have a big goal, you can break it into steps and do a goal sheet for each step.  Think about how to reach your goal and have fun in the process – the more fun you can have with it, the more likely you will stay motivated to do it.
6.  Reward for completion. This seems frivolous but really is important.  Depending on the goal my rewards range from getting to take a trip to Costco (to each her own) to fabulous “vacation” trips (during which I’ll work on yet more goals).

Yes, it’s a never ending cycle.  Don’t look to complete all your goals and then to be “done”.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here’s wishing all of you lots of love and light this holiday season. 

Cocoa and Kisses" Vail, CO in winter - L Kennedy giclee of watercolor and gouache

My gift to you  is another year of the Weekly Art Lesson.  I so hope that it has amused, helped, or inspired you during 2011.  Please let me know what changes you would like to see in the style or content.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

This guest post by Paula Caffee Scadamalia will give you a lot of non-caloric food for thought.  As you go about your week preparing for and enjoying your feast of Thanksgiving, you might want to chew on these ideas.

Make time this week to fan the flames of your creative passions. 

One of the things I love about my visits to The Lodge at Woodloch is sitting by the fire pit in the evening after I’ve given my presentations. I’ve mentioned this before in the context of sharing stories around the fire, but I also love just staring into the fire, whether it’s the fire at Woodloch or the fire in our woodstove. Watching flames bend and twist, curl and straighten puts me into a trance where my mind can get quiet and then release new ideas or insights.

Watching the flames of the Lodge’s fire pit this weekend made me think about our creative flames and how we fuel them.

There is another difference between the fire pit at The Lodge and our woodstove at home, other than that one is outdoors and the other is indoors. It is the source of fuel.

The fire in the pit burns gas around lava rock. Our home woodstove, of course, burns split cordwood.

Once the Lodge staff turns on the gas to the firepit, the fire burns steadily and brightly for the rest of the evening because fuel is supplied to it continuously. That fire doesn’t need careful tending or refueling. It just keeps burning until someone turns a valve that shuts off the fuel supply.

The woodstove at home, however, needs regular tending — the cleaning out of ashes, the shaking down of wood coals, the feeding of more split wood. If Bob or I forget to put in more wood, the fire dies down and then burns out, and we have to start a new fire. Of course, it is much easier and less time consuming to keep a fire burning than it is to start a new one.

The same is true of our creative fires. Most of us don’t have a natural gas line to our creativity. It would be nice if we did. Then we wouldn’t suffer from creative blocks, or run out of fuel just as we near the end of a project, or get burnt out after finishing one. We could just keep creating steadily and easily, with energy and focus.

To keep your creative fire burning brightly:

1. Make keeping your fire burning a priority. I know you’ve heard this before from me as well as others, but just like Bob or I have to make putting wood in the woodstove a part of our daily routine if we want to stay warm (we haven’t turned on our central heat yet), we have to make our creative work part of our regular, staying-creatively-warm routine as well. Schedule time for your work. Make it a priority that is just as important as staying warm.
2. Feed your creative fires. A fire won’t burn without some form of fuel. You have to keep putting words on paper, or paint on canvas, or… well, you get the idea. The more you show up for your work, the easier the work flows most of the time. If we let resistance and procrastination keep us from feeding fuel to our creativity, then it gets increasingly harder to get the fire going again. The longer I’ve been away from my work the harder it is to get back to it, like trying to fan dying embers, it takes a lot more work to get the flame burning hot again. Much easier to keep the fire burning, if I continue to feed it wood.
3. Clean out the old ashes of your work to allow for more fresh air. A fire can’t burn without a regular supply of fresh oxygen. Your creative fire can’t burn without a regular supply of new ideas from sources outside you — like museums, movies, books, travel, etc. Like Julia Cameron’s artist’s date, you need to get out and explore and play. Check those inner sources as well, like dreams, tarot and other oracles, daydreaming, and creative journaling. And clean out the ashes of former projects that maybe didn’t meet your hopes and expectations. They can choke the flames of your new work.

Just like the fire in my woodstove, your creative fire needs regular, consistent, committed tending. With regular feeding, good fuel, and plenty of air, the flames can burn bright enough to keep you warm all year long.

© Copyright 2009, 2010, 2011 Paula Chaffee Scardamalia   Intuitive and creativity coach Paula Chaffee Scardamalia publishes Divine Muse-ings, a weekly ezine. If you want to connect with your Muse for an inspired, gutsy and productive life, sign up at: www.diviningthemuse.com