New Perspectives Directive (or: funky colors and waterspouts)

 In a previous post I showed you some fun pictures I took with my iphone camera of a random plant.  Well, the plant is actually the plant in the art room at work.  How that came about was I was waiting for a client who didn't come, so in the meantime I took pictures (something I often do when I don't know what to do with myself).  I chose to take some close-ups of the plant in the art room.  Then I realized if I took pictures with my iphone then I could email them to myself and edit them at work instead of waiting to get home!  I did just that, then turned them into the black and white images you see in the other post, and brought them to groups.

The first time I brought them to a group I just had them out in case someone needed some inspiration.  Two clients began coloring them in with funky colors.  Meanwhile, I traced one of the images and then colored it in with some interesting colors of my own.

I was really interested in how this came out!  Also what came of making this during the group was that people wanted to learn how to mix colors on the paper like I did - either with colored pencils (what I used) or oil pastels.  The result is that now I will be running a workshop on techniques for using oil pastels next week, since I think it is probably one of the most accessible drawing materials and a lot of "heavy handed" people may enjoy learning how to create illusions of depth, etc etc.

The second time I brought the images to group I pre-cut them into lots of random shapes, purposefully obscuring the image so it didn't look so planty anymore.  I then asked participants to glue one or two of these pieces onto a larger sheet of construction paper and then include those images in a larger art piece.  I said, think of these as the "seeds" for a larger art project.

My project ended up looking like a lot of waterspouts on a turbulent ocean.  I wonder what that's about.  It's probably the most violent image I've made in a long time, even though it's in all blues, greens, and browns.

Anyway, the group really got the idea of the project and ran with it.  It was great to see where people went.  I think pre-cutting the image really helped people move past its origins and try to make something new instead of relying on the original form of the plant.

In general I love using the xerox machine to warp images, so I may continue to stretch the plant pictures beyond their origins and bring them into the groups to have at it!