Art Makes You Happy

kid art

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After consciously choosing “Create Space” as my intention for January (which will be bleeding over into February because my space isn’t completely created yet) I shuffled my remaining 11 One Little Word cards to determine what I would focus on for the other months.

For February I got “Create Art.” The card says

Play with colors, materials, subject matter

Craft as art

Create your life’s masterpiece every day

Practice the art of living creatively

Live an artistic life

All of that sounds pretty nice, and though I don’t completely know what it all means yet, I do think it will be fun to find out.

One thing I’m already doing is exploring art journaling and mixed media art (fancy term for collage). I bought into an online course on mixed media, downloaded some videos on art journaling and signed up for a class to make a collage-y bag. All of this stuff is so much fun, and it’s really great to have a craft in my life that isn’t work related (yet, anyway — I do have some ideas!) and that I can just experiment with.

The Bit’s Take on Art

As I’ve been spending more time thinking about my own creativity I’ve been thinking about creativity in general and paying more attention to when the Bit wants to draw or paint and how she approaches art.

The other night she had a huge fit because I moved a table out of my office — such a giant fit husband could hear her while he was working out in another room with the door closed and headphones on — and when she calmed down she decided she wanted to paint.

This is what she made. (I should mention these pictures are all rumpled because she likes to fold them up and give them to us like they’re wrapped gifts, which I find awesome.)

kid art
I love that somehow this fingerpaint ended up looking like watercolors.

It actually looks a lot like something I would make when she asks me to paint with her, but she’s famous for what I call her “swatch” drawings, which are basically just scribbles of all the different colors she has.

While she was working on it she said “I like art because I like to make pretty things.”

Woah, that’s profound, girl.

Last night she had another little period of sadness (because I wouldn’t let he bake cookies before supper) and she went off to color instead.

drawings
Art, it turns out, is a great way to calm down.

First she drew the one on the left and gave it to me. I asked her if it was black because she was mad. She didn’t really respond to that, but she drew the other one for her dad and said “I drew a yellow hand because I’m happy.”

I love this kid.

Here’s to a month of art making, exploring and fun. What are your goals/focus for the month? I’d love to hear about them!

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing.


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