Creativity Prompts

Are you looking for a friendly supportive space to share your creative projects and be inspired?

I have a new little community on my River Girl Art Healing fb page where I post monthly prompt lists. Everyone is very welcome.

Mixed Media Art Patches

I remember years ago seeing the amazing Teesha Moore on youtube making these gorgeous little patches to make journal covers and bags and things and it was something I always wanted to do but never got around to it.

I finally decided the time was now and started a swap on the Australian Art Swap Group to help keep me on track and motivated and I found I was not alone there are quite a few who were inspired by Teesha and also needed the extra motivation.

We are into our second month and I am so keen for bthe patches in the mail to arrive here. I am planning to make a messenger bag with mine

Looking for Wisdom

 The travelling art journal
Words of Wisdom arrived with winter, things were insanely busy with trying to sell our house and homeschooling and just family life.

I wasn't too concerned as I can usually create a reasonable spread in our allocated month fairly easily and incubation time always takes up the begining of the month for me.

I love the arrival of a new journal.  I love the anticipation and excitement and I love that first perusal over a cuppa. 

I tend to put it on the shelf then and let my ideas brew. Sometimes I will look through the journal a few times in this process until my idea starts to form. 

Sometimes I dont get an idea at all!

I just start playing and let it happen.

And this page is one that evolved on the page, intuitively.

 After 6 days sick in bed I was desperate to art despite have no wisdom on what I would create.

I just doodled all over the page with intense pencils then activated with watered down white and a tiny brayer. Looking at what came out made me think of pebbles on a beach and away I went.

Flying Fox

I am the last artist to work in Roz Willoughby's lovely silhouette travelling art journal.

My page is inspired by the 20 000 flying foxes we have on Susan and Peanut Islands in the mighty, mighty Clarence river in Grafton NSW. 

They are such a magnificent sight filling the sky at sunset, swooping down to the river to skim the surface wetting their furry chests so they can get a drink after a long hot day sleeping in the trees before dispersing for their evening of foraging and pollinating.

These colonies are native to the east coast but innocently inspire quite a bit of contention in human communities. Personally I admire and appreciate them and I am a keen gardener and fruit tree grower and spent 2 years living right next to a huge colony further down river. I like to live and let live and tread lightly upon this earth. 

Funky Town

Robyn's cute little journal from round 6 of the Australian Art Journal Swap has been sitting on my desk just waiting for me to play.

I have been trying to remember what I dreamed of as a kid and I think it was living in a real community. 

My Mama had a really cool friend who homeschooled her kids and I had a girlfriend down the road with an exotic hippy extended family. I so wanted to live in that funky imagined utopia.

My page is created using home made stamps, acrylic paints, gel pens and posca paint pens.

Gypsy Journal

I, like quite a few of us took a while to find my mojo and create my journal for round 6, but once I did it was so much fun.

My theme is Gypsy.

To me this word brings so many images to mind but the beautiful horse drawn gypsy caravan and a fortune teller were the strongest.

I used my favourite Stonehenge paper and bound with leather.  My pages are created with inktense pencils, acrylic paint, serviette, lace and scrap book paper.

Im ready to hitch up the horses and send it travelling and watch it gather beauty here on our blog, you can follow along https://australianartjournalswap.blogspot.com.au/

Tea Bag Art in Lisa'a journal

My first journal to play in, in Round 6 is our fabulous Lisa Jones's Music and Lyrics. Lisa is such a gorgeous artist and one of the things I admire is her incredible tea bag art! So I was always going to do something with tea bags in this journal.

I had to find a song that had tea in it and what could be more iconic than "A home among the gum trees".

I painted my page with tea and used some inktense for the green leaves, the plums and the dark browns.  Tea bags are collaged onto the trees and the house.

I was quietly chuckling when I saw Joans dot to dot this month  on AASG is all about tea bags!