Making Art For Art's Sake

I recently picked up two art supply subscriptions. The first one was Let's Make Art. I get a box every month with watercolor paints, paper and a design created by Sarah Cray, the artist who does the paint along videos. She does live videos and you can watch the prerecorded videos any time. These are the paintings I've done so far.

 The pickup truck was the first one I did. I haven't painted in 30 years! I did a pretty decent job. The bear was the the second one and the dog the third one. I'm in the middle of painting a forest scene and that one is about 2/3 of the way finished (the paintings can usually be done in about an hour. I'm just being lazy about that one). 


The second subscription is Sketchbox. Every month I get a box of mystery art supplies. This time it was a handful of different markers and a small 4x6 tablet of paper. This doesn't come with preset artwork to copy so I had a harder time getting started with this one because 1) I didn't know what I wanted to do and 2) my brain keeps telling me I can't sketch or draw. Clearly, my brain doesn't know what the hell it's talking about. This is what I made with those supplies.

 It was a very limited color pallet - pinks, purples, greens. The green marker is cool-it has a light/medium/dark marker all in one barrel. That's the one I used for the grapes. I'm quite surprised by the variety of things I was able to do with just those colors. 

I have to admit that the middle two (floating island and watermelon) are based on designs Sarah Cray did for the June and July Let's Make Art watercolor boxes are are not my own original ideas. All of these are just small 4x6 sketches so they're quick to make.

Then I got inspired by a photo I took years ago of tulips in the planters around the Main Street train station at Disneyland. Last night I decided to draw that.

This is done with colored pencils. I have lots of those on hand already. It doesn't look exactly like the photo I took, but really, do I want it to? It doesn't need to be photorealistic to convey the idea of tulips growing along an iron fence. I have more photos for reference that are calling to me.







I've done all this artwork over the past two months. Probably more art than I've made in the last two years! And all of it simply for the sake of making art. It's not for sale. It's not for a contest. It's not for a show. It's just about the fun of making art. 


I encourage you to make art and be creative in whatever way YOU are creative. That could be drawing or painting, or it could be baking, sewing, gardening, flower arranging, writing. organizing something or any number of other outlets. There are SO many ways to express our creative side.

Don't let anyone tell you that creativity or art is frivolous or a waste of time. The expression of creativity it vital to our wellbeing and our expression of who we are.

Be creative. And do it just for the joy of doing it!