QUIRKY DUTCH SUMMER WORKSHOP

A very dear friend of mine, who I met online years ago, is having a summer workshop.  Her name is Marit and she is an amazing artist!  She teaches workshops all the time and she charges a fee for them.  However this one is free!  It already started, but you can catch up!!  It is called "Quirky Dutch Summer" and is a weekly workshop, that offers a prompt, or technique or something else meant to inspire you to create.  This is my piece for week 3, "word play".  It is about using words in your art work.  Marit gives tons of examples, please visit her to read all about it.

the rattle snake hissed

the rattlesnake did attack

although it missed me

I told people yesterday that there was a story behind this page and here it is.  My large son, 15, made this snake in art class a year ago.  Yes, he enjoys art and makes wonderful things!!  And I keep all of it, of course, and put it in his memory book.  Now when my small son was 12, last year, he wrote this haiku and for some reason it tickled me!  I found it so intriguing because of all things to write about why pick a rattle snake?  When I asked him, his only reason was because he thought the words   hissed, and missed rhymed so that made him think of a rattle snake.  Now, Marit gives all these examples of word play, and one of them is haiku.  She writes them all the time.  I am no poet, but I remembered small wrote a haiku!  I went to the memory book, hoping it was one of the things I saved and luckily it was!!  Now what to do?  Yes, large made a picture of a rattlesnake a year ago!  and so, my 2 boys actually made this page.  I just used a page in my art journal that was already prepared with gesso, sprayed purple ink on it and wrote with a black sharpie.  The 12 year old wrote the words, and the 14 year old made the picture, and I love this page!!  So many people who saw this on my desk in yesterday's post said they hated it because they hate snakes.  I'm not a snake fan myself, but since the idea for this came from a snake, I think in this case, SNAKES ARE AWESOME!!!

Thanks for listening to my long story, and thanks Marit for the wonderful workshop!!