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Imagine With Art Newsletter
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Issue No. 4
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November, 2009
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I welcome your comments!
susan@imaginewithart.com
707-824-8163
Table of Contents:
Workshops
Etymological Inspirations
Sketchbooking
Art Play Technique
Hot Book!
Upcoming Events
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Dear Friends,
All month I've been promising an upcoming book about this practice of art journaling or contemplative sketchbooking which I'm doing now in the Muse groups. The book is titled Conversations with the Muse. In the process of compiling, writing, and designing the book, my own creative tail is wagging like crazy. Why have I waited so long to do this?! Art has always been a healing and rejuvenating force in my life. The book will be a kind of colorful anatomy of art as an alchemical process. My goal is to have the book available for purchase by January. I'll update you in next month's newsletter.
Please take a moment to check out the winter workshop schedule here, and pick up some ideas for books and art techniques to add to your collection.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Susan
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Imagine With Art Workshops
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Winter Workshops, 2010
Muse Groups
The Muse group is a laboratory to spark creative expression, an opportunity to treat yourself to a regular infusion of art play in a supportive group setting. Each session features a different painting or art technique which you can add to your repertoire - from textured collage to a variety of wet media painting techniques. Simultaneously you will learn an art practice which captures your thoughts, feelings, and intuitions in a playful visual format that you can keep as an ongoing book of your life.
Tuesday Evening Muses (weekly)
When: January 12-February 16 (6 weekly sessions)
Time: 6:30-9:30pm
Cost: $180
Location: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
Sunday Muses (monthly)
When: Jan 3, Feb 7, Mar 7, Apr 11, May 2, Jun 6, 2010 (6 monthly sessions)
Time: 10:00am-2pm
Cost: $240
Location: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
Saturday Muses (monthly)
When: March 6, April 10, May 1, June 5, July 10, Aug. 6, 2010 (6 monthly sessions)
Time: 10am-2pm
Cost: $240
Location: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
Everyday Sketching in Your Watercolor Journal
Do you wish you had more time to draw and paint? This workshop will wet your appetite for the stop-in-the-middle-of-your-busy-day sketch opportunity. Rainy weather? Sit comfortably inside and sketch your desk top. Time for a coffee break? Bring your sketchbook and capture in a few simple lines the guy at the next table with the cell phone glued to his ear. This will be a day of quick-capture pen sketching and watercolor washes practiced in the studio and at lunch in a local restaurant.
Date: January 23, 2010
Time: 10am-5pm
Where: The Studio in the Orchard, North Sebastopol
Cost: $80
Art Journaling
Learn an art practice which captures your thoughts, feelings and intuitions in a playful visual format that you can keep as an ongoing book of your life. Using inks, water based paints, collage and written word we follow our initial flow, then move into guided reflection to develop art pages which are a timely expression of personal truth.
Date: March 20, 2010
Time: 10am-5pm
Where: Sebastopol Center for the Arts, www.sebarts.org, 707-829-4797
Cost: $80
To register for a workshop contact me at susan@imaginewithart.com
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Etymological Inspiration
Palimpsest
PAL - imp - sest, noun
a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text.
In the early days before the mass production of paper, parchment was scarce, necessitating the reuse of writing surfaces. But we can layer text and image in a painting to suggest layers of history, secrets hidden, memories forgotten, rediscovered, and rewritten.
In the Tuesday evening Muse group last
week we turned our usual sequence (painting, collaging and writing)
around and started out by doing our free write directly onto the
watercolor paper with pen. We each picked our own theme of current
interest to write about. Then we spent the rest of the evening
creating a palimpsest by covering most of the words with paint and
collage while allowing some to show through. This was both
frustrating, as when the words seemed too "important" to cover, and
liberating when the words were covered with metaphoric images capturing
their essence. At the end of the evening we added yet another layer of
meaning to our pieces by writing about them again, with further
insights arising. All the pieces that came out of this evening showed a depth of meaning that was quite intriguing.
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Sketchbooking
When the weather is not as accommodating for outdoor sketching, you can find new subjects. Armchair sketching can be every bit as gratifying as the glamorous vacation travel sketching. For instance, have you tried sketching a corner of your living room or your kitchen counter after busy meal preparation? You'll find that even the most ordinary subjects can be engaging, and can give you a new appreciation of everyday life.
Of course the master of this type of sketching is Danny Gregory, and his book The Creative License is a great guide to give you not only ideas for sketching subjects, but the motivation to continue. And join me in January for a day of every day sketchbooking with pen and watercolor.
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Art Play Technique
Try
playing with this. . .make a palimpsest! - a painting with words partially obscured by subsequent layers of paint. What meaning would you like to imbed in your painting? A story perhaps, or the philosophical questions that have been weighing on your mind. Write or draw the words directly on your paper. Then paint over them with transparent acrylics or watercolors, having fun watching the colors mix on the paper. As a final step mix white gesso with your acrylic paints or white gouache with your watercolors to paint opaque passages in your painting, covering the original words in places, leaving some revealed in intriguing ways. If you want, you could finish with more words on the top layer. You've created a painting which is imbued with meaningful history. A palimpsest!
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Creative Healing: How to heal yourself by tapping your hidden creativity by Michael Samuels, M.D. and Mary Rockwood Lane, R.N., M.S.N.
How does art help to heal not only emotional but physical illness? This book will fascinate you with answers that include the physiology of healing, the history of art healing practices back to ancient times and the accounts of artists who have worked successfully to heal themselves and others with art. The authors take us on a tour of this new field of art and healing that is broader than traditional art therapy and includes what most of us who practice an art on a regular basis are doing. Here's a quote from the book's introduction:
Art gives us the ability to journey inward to a mind-body state that is deeply healing. In our imagination, we can glimpse images that heal us. Our expressions of these images can change our bodies and our lives.
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February 11-March 21, 2010
"The Personal Image Revealed"
Solo exhibit of my art journaling process
Gallerie II at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts,
6780 Depot St., Sebastopol, CA
707-829-4797, www.sebarts.org
The theme of this show is the art journal. It reveals the haunting force of image when it comes as a direct revelation of a personal moment in time. The viewer becomes both voyeur and participant as the art chronicles the inner and outer shape of life, dreams, contemplations, revelations, emerging archetypes and moment of breakthrough. The installation will include my journal books, wall hung art, demonstration videos, and my new book Conversations with the Muse.
Opening reception: February 11, 2010, 6-7:30pm
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That's it for now. You can visit me on my Art and Sketchbook blog for my latest images and art/life ramblings, and you can subscribe and get it in email (there's a link for this on the blog).
Thanks for your visits and inspiring comments, and for sending lots of resources to me so I can share them with others here.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Susan Cornelis
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