What Do You Say, Let's Play!!

Come play with me. Forget your worries. Leave your troubles at the doorstep. Life is sweet. Life is short. Remember "all work and no play makes Jack or is it Jill, a dull boy or girl." So stop what you are doing, grab something "arty"  and join me in a bit of play.

You, dear friend, and I are probably similar in that our first memory of coloring was a yellow box of Crayola Crayons. Christmas meant a NEW BOX tucked in my Christmas stocking. The newness even smelled yummy! Did you have a favorite color, then cry when it accidentally broke in half? I ALWAYS went for the RED! Brown was the only crayon left unscathed in my box. Then there was the time when I left my box in the window during the summer....well today I would know what to do with the melted potpourri of colors, but then, the lip just quivered and I withered into gloom and great sadness.

Yesterday I thought about doing a crayon doodle just for fun and "old time's sake."  But next to me sat my i Pad with a few amazing apps.....sketching, painting apps. So being a "modern Grammy" I grabbed my stylus....dog gone, no red stylus...and decided to scribble away. I couldn't believe how much fun it turned out to be. Pure Glee! yes SIRREE!!

You are familiar with the monthly airplane magazines, the ones that are all wrinkled and handled a hundred times? Well, I was browsing through one and ran across an article on an IMPORTANT ARTIST (and now I have forgotten his name) and his art using an i Pad. That article with accompanying pictures satisfied me like no bag of pretzels ever could.  Pretty fascinating, it seemed like a really FUN FUN FUN thing to try myself.  And so I did:

This app by Adobe even has LAYERS....pretty cool stuff!  Rather like layers in Photoshop...only SO MUCH EASIER!!!! 

 

This scribble is inspired by a photo I took of a woman washing her clothes in the river in India.  No stylus, just my fingers.

Lazily floating down the river, I sat on my bed and sketched our little bedroom on the barge. 

As you can see I am feeling pretty relaxed and having a whole lot of fun. Hmmm for now this is much more fun than struggling with a canvas and oils!!! 

In fact, I think this is how I am going to sketch out my ideas before actually painting them. I can change colors in a wink of an eye.  I can rearrange without erasering.  And wow, the money to be saved by not repainting over and over again!  Yup, this is the life.....

All this i Pad scribbling is reminding me how much I LOVE to use our grand children's Etch-a-Sketch pads !  Just another form of fun!

Going back a zillion years, my second favorite way to do art was with tempera paints. Oh, the colors. The juicy running together of red and yellow and discovering orange. I WAS a REAL ARTIST painting a masterpiece with my brushes, jars of paint and  huge pieces of manila paper.

An i Pad is loads of fun BUT it is not messy. No spills, no paint on one's best pants, no dirty water to dump without spilling, no brushes to clean out and no rolls of paper towels for accidents. Definitely not tactile. But tempera paint has it all....and it is so cheap.

Feeling rather self confident and cocky after NOT using tempera paint since school days, I opted to PAINT and EXPLORE in my art journal.  After a hardy shake my twelve colors were poured into little plastic bowls. Grabbing a few brushes, I opened my creamy watercolor notebook and just went for it.....like a kid, no planning, just going for it. Well after three hours of bliss (meaning no phone calls or interuptions, just fun) I managed to do half a dozen little paintings. I must have been subconsciously starving as they all had to do with food!!!!

Oops this transferred upside down...all the more fun!

Tempera paint is definitely on my list of "to do's" it is so freeing and fun. This last little scene is painted on brown paper sack! Guess I will glue it to my art journal.
The white highlight is a correction pen. 

Are you ready to PLAY?  Carve out a few hours, use what you have, even carved potatoes dipped into paint or stamp pads would be loads of fun. Be prepared, once you switch to child mode,  you will have floods of past memories and be eager to do it again and again. Let me know what you play with.

You can count on more i Pad and tempera paint sharing from me, I am hooked! It has been great to be a kid again.