Polka dots and poetry

Or, bridge building 101.

Many people (slight exaggeration, perhaps), have asked where I get my bridge building ideas. After all, in order for the bridge to work, it has to meet important criteria. It must be:

• fun


• stress free


• for the most part, directed from elsewhere so that I don't have to think too hard

For your bridge building pleasure, I thought I would share some of my current favorites.



For loose, fun exercises, I turn to Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists. This little guy came from one of those bridge building days.



When I'm in a silly mood and just want to play with a pencil you can't beat any Mark Kistler book. If I want to get messy and feel like an 8 year old again, I turn to this fantastic book by Denise Logan.


But my favorite current bridge-building activity is to add color to this beautiful, hand crafted coloring book

:


When this incredible creation arrived, I was momentarily frozen with indecision about what to do with it. It was so amazing that I didn't want to ruin it. I turned to one of the line drawings and decided to just add some watercolor washes without worrying about it. Then I knew what I had to do.

Add dots -
Lots
and lots
of dots.
Here a dot
there a dot
everywhere a dot, dot.


I don't have to worry too much about it. Just add dots - wherever they seem to want to go, in whatever color they seem to want to be.

Dots are strangely soothing and very playful. You can add them while listening to your favorite dot-type music. They are a perfect bridge-building activity.

I thought about what to put on the facing pages of my beautiful polka dot illustrations and it hit me (while running, of course - all my most inspired ideas come while running): poetry!

Polka dots and poetry.

Poetry can be intimidating and serious, but paired with polka dots? Preposterous.

When I was young I wrote poetry all of the time. I'm sure it was very bad poetry, but I loved it and I loved the process. So, I've decided to fill my beautiful Photosynthesis book with polka dots and poetry.

Perfect.