Positively Painting and Drawing From Imagination

I am reading a book written by Carla Sonheim called Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals and the premise is start your paintings with no intention and your left side of the brain will allow your right side of your brain to take over and your imaginations will positively soar.

To create this family of imaginary birds, I began by painting a leaf shape with water and then lightly tapped my watercolour brush loaded with a primary colour of paint on one edge of the leaf.  Next I used another primary colour on the opposite edge of the leaf and then tilted my journal back and forth until the two colours kissed and merged.

Next, I sat and stared at the images as they dried and tried to visualize what I could turn them into.  I began drawing "noodles" with a fine tipped permanent marker and then started adding eyes and voila, I decided my imaginary creatures would be birds.  I outlined them and then decided to use pencil crayons, and a white paint marker to add more colour and details.  Finally, I painted a background.

A similar process occurred for the each set of imaginary animals.  The idea of doing this is that you will get positions and gestures that you would not normally get if you were drawing from memory, and Carla was absolutely right!  The animals develop personalities of their own.

This is such a fun process and can be done with all age groups.  I tried this with my grade ones and they created fish, zoo animals and all sorts of other animals!  They loved to watch the two primary colours mix!  It was challenging for a few to not start with an intention and just let the water and the paint do the work.  Some wanted to make fish, or flowers and pictures, but I had to remind them to let it go and let the paintings tell them what they wanted to be!

The doggy resembles my dog Lucy, the stinker.  She enjoys chewing, so  imagine that, a shoe appeared! So far she has eaten three hats, one earring, one mechanical pencil, two spray  bottles, two pairs of shoes, one boot, one football glove, a mouth guard, several squeaky toys, her doggy bed, her dog house, and that is all I know about!  I am surprised she came out looking so cute and innocent, she is a bit of a beast!

Painting and drawing from imagination is less stressful, more risks are taken and it is positively fun!