Creativity Positively Takes Courage!

Henri Matisse once declared, "Creativity takes courage."   This is a message I was trying to convey to a group of students in my art class at school.  The assignment was to explore how watercolour paint acts and mixes.  The students were to first paint with water in random ways on the paper and then lightly dab with the paint brush loaded with watercolour paint onto the blobs of water, and watch the magic happen.

With watercolour paint, the colour only flows where the paper is wet.  Some of the students began by saying, " Hmmm, what should I make?", thinking they should have a plan before painting.  I told them to let the watercolour blob tell them.  It takes courage to let the magic of science whisper ideas into our minds.

This is a collection of creatures that I created for this exploration.  They all seem to have a Star Wars quality to them.  During the holidays, we went to the new Stars Wars movie, and it opened a whole can of questions for me.  I had never really been interested in Star Wars, but suddenly my interest was peeked and we began a marathon of watching all of the Star Wars movies.  We still have one left to go.

Qui-Gon wisely suggested to Obi-wan Kenobi, " Remember, concentrate on the moment.  Feel, don't think, use your instincts."  This is totally relevant to this exploration.  It is about instincts and not about planning out an idea.  This is quite scary for some people, but I totally enjoy the problem solving process.

This experiment of shape and colour has really pushed me to explore how contrasting colours really work with each other.  I added details with Sharpie pens, oil soluble  pastels and a white pen.  What fun.

I encourage you to have courage to explore.  You will be surprised to see how creative you can be!