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Creative Joyful Thing No.3

*Write a Haiku*

This is my favourite Haiku at the moment:

O snail

Climb Mount Fuji,

But slowly, slowly!

~ Kobayashi Issa

A definition:

Haiku is an unrhymed, syllabic form adapted from the Japanese: three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Because it is so brief, a haiku is necessarily imagistic, concrete and pithy, capturing a single moment in a very few words.

Because the form has been brought into English from a language written in characters, in which a haiku appears on a single line, many poets writing haiku in English are flexible about the syllable and line counts, focusing more on the brevity, condensed form and “Zen” attitude of haiku. The traditional Japanese haiku requires some reference to nature or the season.

Enjoy!

Here is my Haiku:

Raggle-taggle bunch

Picked on December 15th

You are beautiful

It was about a bunch of misshapen and partially formed flowers that I had found still struggling to bloom, despite the fact that they should be dead at this time of year. It was a pink rose and some blue anemones. In actual fact I could have picked them a few days ago, almost the same, a month later! We have had a mild winter so far, though it is very frosty today.

And here are the TWO Haiku Rachael sent to me (I am spoilt!)

The cover of the first (they were sent inside little cards)

And the Haiku:

Apricot, turquoise,

Charcoal and dark amethyst

Sky promises storm

And here is the second one:

She particularly liked the structure of the words in this one, being 3, 5, 3:

O wing-ed brethren

Help me! With unfeathered wings

Earthbound I remain

*Find/create an image on card or sturdy paper. I will do the same… Then, we will swap and add something to the other person’s image in a different medium*

Things to add:

• Fabric
• Metal
• Thread
• Organic Matter (!)
• Plastic
• Paint
• Photo
• Anything else!

Enjoy!

(To read Creative Joyful Thing No.1 and what this is about, see here)

This is the front

this is the back

Here are the images inside. She made one large image, then put a mini photo taken from it on the opposite side. To view the full page you need to click on each image.

She said to me that really she felt that the mini shots were the great achievement of the project and the bit she loved the best. I think she will be pleased that you need to click on each image to see the larger photos and can just see the smaller ones on this page.

I love her use of paint cards and then searching for that colour…

This branch only turned pink after her dog chewed it… a pink bruise.

This was almost her favourite colour, the one she was searching for: Flame. She said to me that Flame was the closest to the clour she was searching, but that you can’t get a paint card for it, exactly.

This one was taken through the hole in her jeans, of the tile floor. I love it!

So there we are, Creative Joyful Thing No.1 is finished and we are both moving on to number two! See next post!

(My friend has also sent me her photos and I will blog about them in the next post – it was so exciting to see what she had done!)

I made one for myself and one for my friend too. I put an index at the back and folded the end over to the front to create a spine. I then sewed a piece of wool throughout the set to make it into a booklet. Just a touch of glue to make it sit right and it was done.

Here are the images within my book!

As is it September, I thought we could pretend to be on a very, very part-time art course over the course of the year and perhaps meet up next summer to share portfolios!

The plan is that I will make up and send her a Creative Joyful Thing to undertake in her own time, and I shall do it too, then when we have both finished we will send each other pictures of what we have done! This way we will both be independently working on a similar thing and not influencing each other, so we will see different takes on an idea/project. Once we are both done, we will move on to the next one. Here is our starting point:

Creative Joyful Thing No.1

*Shoot a roll of film/series of digital photos on a theme*

Themes:

• Texture or pattern
• A colour of your choice
• Wabi Sabi (not sure yet what this is exactly
  but it seems like the in-thing!)
• Noise – can you make me hear things when I
  look at your pictures?
• Silhouettes
• Your choice – Something else that you want to
  explore!

Enjoy!

We have both chosen a different theme – not telling YOU what they are yet though! Will post my work up here, and maybe hers too if she agrees.

If anyone wants to play along with us - please do! I am planning on making each thing very different from the last, so hold onto your hats!

I have been to the coast a few times in recent months and have found some beautiful shells, sea glass and bits of coal.

I had been thinking about doing something with them, but had not come up with anything specific. Then a friend’s birthday was coming up and I wondered if I could make some stickers to decorate her presents.

I spread out the shells but needed a background, then remembered another friend had given me some postcards she made which had a sandy background! Perfect! So I had a photo shoot and really enjoyed it. The fiddling about with the sticker set-up for the printer was less fun, but I got there in the end and I made a sheet of tiny but lovely stickers. I stuck them all over my friend’s presents and also gave her a sheet so she can decorate letters and packages for other people too, as she loves that kind of thing.

The best bit is that it is all set up so I can print more off or change the images quite easily for new stickers!

A friend came to visit me last weekend. She is lovely and creative so we set up the kitchen table and did some drawing/painting together. It was fun to work with someone else there! She did some painting and it was great to watch someone else at work and see her picture develop. I was a bit stuck for what to do, so I went out into the garden for inspiration and came back with this beautiful sweet pea. The smell of it while I was drawing was really good! I had nearly finished the outline when a little black bug emerged from the folds of the petals, so I put it in exactly where it was and I think it adds something!

Firstly he had a giveaway for new subscribers and I won a copy of his illustrated journal The Beany (I got number 3). I already have a digital copy of the fourth book, but I am loving the feel of the real and paper-based copy in my hand this time. I can’t wait to find some free time and a cosy place to indulge in that.

Then he held a birthday giveaway (on his birthday) and I won a book called The Artist In The Office by Summer Pierre and even though I do not have a day job in the traditional sense, I certainly do have a day (and night!) job in managing my illness so I hope I can adapt some of the advice to my situation.

So, Saturday was a very good post day!

I am really enjoying being a member and getting (amongst other things) a daily micro podcast to listen to what Michael is doing/thinking about and also to help me focus my mind on what I want to achieve creatively and to remind me that doing just a small thing can move my work forwards.

Thank You Michael!

I have been enjoying picking flowers in my garden. This is this week’s bouquet. There are a couple of lilies which should open and make it look and smell even better! Last week’s arrangement was all roses and fennel and was gorgeous, but the thunderstorms seem to have bashed all the roses to pieces so there will be a pause before more appear. I have deadheaded!

I also picked a miniature bunch with some tiny sweet peas and night-scented stocks so it smells really good:

There is also one white helibore flower at the front – it is so wierd that this “Christmas Rose” has decided to flower a second time in July! It has never done this before and we have had it for over 3 years. It must be happy.