Summer Creative Retreat: Inspiration Treasure Hunt

Last year, I took six classes during The Pigeon Letters Summer Creative Retreat. (This one was my favorite. Or maybe this one.) Summer Creative Retreat is billed as the world's biggest free online art event, with 60 classes and over 20, 000 people attending. I really enjoyed it last year and was eager to participate again. Unfortunately, I didn't get home from Idaho until this year's Summer Creative Retreat was half over, and then I had to do all those annoying things like laundry, groceries, bills, and catching up with work that come after a trip. I did manage to watch four of the classes on replay before the event ended and I crafted along with two of them. 

The first was Inspiration Treasure Hunt: A Playful Process for Creating Art, by Mel Rye. 

Mel began by asking us to go on an Inspiration Treasure Hunt to find random objects on our workspace. We looked carefully at the items we found to discover shapes and textures. For example, a simple pencil has a round eraser that might inspire dots, a metal ferrule with vertical lines, and a wavy pattern where the pencil was sharpened. 

We used the shapes we found to doodle the shapes they inspired onto plain paper. It was fascinating how many different patterns I was able to make using found items sitting on my desk. I did most of my doodles with a ballpoint pen, then switched to a Sharpie in order to get darker shapes for contrast. After creating a bunch of patterns, we cut those apart and arranged them on a colorful background. As you can see in the graphic above, Mel made abstract designs. I made fruit. The watermelon, pear, and apple each use three different patterns and the pineapple has two, so there are 11 different doodles represented below. 

This was a really fun activity and a great way to stretch creatively. It's something you could do anywhere, since it uses so few materials. Such a fun class!