Top 10 Studio Favorites

Need a little mix up in your creative life? Try playing around with your studio top ten. Pick ten of your favorite supplies. Pick a crafty book that makes you happy. Use the book to inspire some new art using your top ten supplies.

My inspiration book: Painted Pages, by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare. I have blogged about this book before, but I can't help it... I just love it. Perhaps it is spring's refusal to start around here, but Sarah's sunny and delicate style looked so enticing. She uses a lot of white and pastel colors to create such dreamy images. I decided to use my supplies to work toward this warmth.

My Top Ten Supplies:

1) Acrylic paints
2) Gouache paints
3) Pan pastels
4) Stencils
5) Carved stamps
6) StazOn ink
7) Caran d'ache water soluble wax pastels
8) Deli paper
9) Graphite pencil
10) Painted papers to collage (using matte gel medium)

I started by cutting 4 pieces of watercolor paper and tracing a 5" x 7" rectangle on each. I started each piece with an outline of acrylic color. Turquoise is my new favorite color.

I kept layering paint, pencil, pastels, stencils, stamps and collage to create these summery pieces.
 

It was fun working with the same set of supplies to create four different pieces. I tried to use a lot of the same colors, images and marks, just moving the composition around as I worked. I'm not sure what I will do with these pieces, but it was a great exercise and a fun way to push myself in a different direction - always a good thing creatively.

I enjoyed this exercise so much, I might make it a regular practice. How about you? Do you have a regular practice that moves you into a new direction creatively?