Thursday, July 16, 2009

Drawing on the Walls: Roundup

I've been working away on my book, Artmaking as Playful Prayer: A 12-Week Guide to Developing Your Creativity as a Spiritual Practice, and finally got a draft out to my marvelous test readers earlier today. Now, I'm waiting to hear what they have to say and working on the hands-on explorations that will appear in the book! And you know, I'm going to need some people to test out the art stuff (hint, hint).

One of the things I mention in passing in the book (and may need to explore in more depth - perhaps in my own basement) is the idea of drawing on the walls. It's basic, right? It's exactly how our ancestors got started, and it's a straight-forward form of artmaking. You have an object that makes marks, and something to make marks on, and the nearest, easiest thing to make marks on is . . . well, the walls. And then I remembered seeing something on-line about people doing just that . . .

A few hours of Googling later, and I have found some cool goodies to share with you. If you're a bit shy of messing up your walls, there is paint-by-numbers wallpaper (found via casasugar), like this from Jenny Wilkinson:




If you're ready to just dive in, but like a little structure, you might try something like this frames wallpaper by Taylor & Wood (found via the droolicious blog on babble.com) and available in the US via the Graham & Brown website. I really want this for my office, and it would be super fun in a bathroom or kid's room! It also has the advantage that you can steam it off and perhaps take it with you - avoiding the whole "I'm moving and I have to paint over my artwork" trauma.



Or, you can just grab your permanent marker and go to town! I found two brave souls who have done just that via compactbydesign.com. The first is Charlie Kratzer from Kentucky who grabbed a Sharpie and decorated his basement - you can even see a video of the whole thing on the Kentucky Sun website, but here's a taste:


Or, if you have a gold pen and steady hand, you can check out Kellie's blog and see what she got herself up to in the hallway:

Yup, I'm looking at the office in the basement in a whole new light . . .

3 comments:

Infinite Possibilities said...

Dragons on the walls..... that could work.

Beverly Ash Gilbert said...

Bridget - thank you for your wonderful comment about my book - and that you saw it at Collage!

Congrats on writing your book. What a wonderful process.

Love your drawing on the wall ideas and examples... hmmm

Jaime Lyerly said...

Very cool. I cover my walls with drawings but never on the wall itself.

By the way, if you need a tester for the art part of your book, let me know. I would love to help out. I am following you on twitter http://twitter.com/jaimelyerly or my blog at http://jaimelyerly.blogspot.com if you want to find out more about me. I work primarily in mixed media 2-d and 3-d encaustic works.

Let me know!
Jaime Lyerly

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