Why Write?

With not having a job right now I was running out of things to do to keep me busy during the day. A good friend told me to try out calligraphy, and can I just say that I'm so grateful I did! Calligraphy is amazing and addicting. It has a way of calming you and sucking you in. It's the same feeling I get when I do embroidery. I'm focused in on this simple task, be it a stitch or a stroke, that everything else fades away and I become relaxed. I just write, or I just sew and nothing else matters.

I came across this video though and thought I would share.

Why Write?

Now if you don't have 16 minutes to just sit down and watch this TED clip, then scroll a little further. But really, you should watch it.



The medical loving side of me caught on to this research he mentioned... Here are the notes:

-He took a cognitive psychology class and studied how handwriting helps develop the brain. During the different tactile movements of doing handwriting, the brain is engaged in more areas and the information is ingrained into the brain. The same was not found to be true with typing however, which does not involve the same type of differential tactile movements.
-Handwriting was also found to be incredibly helpful in small children who were learning to read. By forming the individual letters they had a deeper understanding of the anatomy of each one, and were therefore able to recognize it when it came time to read it on the page.
-Cursive was found to be even more beneficial to the brain. Researchers and scientists have done brain scans on children learning cursive and found that the different parts of the brain engaged are similar to those that adults typically use for writing and higher reasoning. The screen went blank when the kids were doing typing because it didn't involve the same type of tactile movement.

Interesting right?! I love learning about how amazing the body is and how things effect each other.

Here's another article for you:

Why Writing by Hand Could Make You Smarter

I think it was in high school that I decided I wanted to start writing in cursive more. (I'll have to check my journal for sure though.) I had to do a google search for the cursive alphabet for some of the letters I had forgotten from elementary school. Cursive became my primary handwriting for my journal and remains still. I love cursive. It's so fun and fast and beautiful.

If all of this hasn't inspired you to take a second look at your handwriting then I don't know what will. It's never to late to try something new. Start with cursive and just a normal pen or pencil. I think knowing cursive beforehand has been helpful with picking up calligraphy. And then try some calligraphy. I'm excited to really study it out and practice. I find myself looking at billboards now and imagining the direction that the strokes would need to go to produce the thick/thin look of the letters. Pathetic I know but whatever. It happens!

Gateway Chalk Art Festival 2014

Chalk art festival number four happened for me this past weekend and I think it was my favorite image that I've done so far. It was also my last chalk art festival before Scott and I will be moving. 

 

There were three of us that worked on the image together as a team. Last year we did a Michael Jackson image but it rained and ruined our work, so we never fully finished it.
But we wanted to do something with a lot of color, something interesting that wouldn't be everywhere else. (Frozen movie characters were immediately thrown off the list of options. Way too popular.)
This was the oil painting I found that we decided to do. 

 Normally I like to prepare for the festivals by sketching out the image on paper using the grid and then when the time gets closer, rough sketching the full size we're going to do on sidewalk. But this was the first time that I never sketched out on paper, on sidewalk or anything before the festival. So I was not feeling great about it. Combine with the absurd amount of things going on in mine and Scott's life the past couple months... means I was at times regretting even signing up for the festival. I just didn't feel like I had enough time for everything and I was getting stressed out! 

 Starting the image was hard. It was hard to figure out how to make an oil painting work with chalk and a sidewalk. We were kicking ourselves in the pants for picking this image at first. But as the hours went by we finally figured out how to make it work.

Meet Amber. She is the messiest chalker I know. :)
 

Meet KaLee. She is a perfectionist and made our image perfect. Amber and I made her do that hard parts that we didn't want to even attempt. (Like the gondalas.... geesh hard.)

 We chalked for 7 hours Friday evening, ending at 9:00 pm. It started to get really windy so we taped a tarp down around our image and called it quits for the night. There is where we ended...

 It ended up only taking us 4 hours to finish the image the next morning. I thought for sure it would take longer but we got rolling along! 

 The image was 8ft tall and 6 ft wide. I have no idea if we won any of the contests. We didn't stay long enough to find out. But that's okay because I never do these for the contests. It's fun being in the environment of all these great chalkers around you, creating beautiful images. You get sucked into your own work and don't realize you've been on the ground as long as you have. I love chalking as a group. My first chalk art I did by myself and it was fun and rewarding, but I couldn't even attempt these larger scale, and more difficult images that we've done as a group. Plus it's just fun to spend so much time with your friends creating something.

Here are some of the other images that were done that I thought were picture worthy!

The End!

Gateway's Chalk Art Festival

This year I tried out chalking with a team and can I tell you that it's so fun and nice! With all three of us working it still took us eight hours to finish our piece. We didn't finish until 10 pm that night. 

Sadie Dodsen and Amber Johnson were my lovely team members. Can you believe that they've never done chalk art before?! They're amazing and I loved doing this with them!

*Sadie*

*Amber*

Portrait Found

Hey there, remember this story about my Paris boyfriend? Well, I was in a cleaning mood last night so I attacked a couple shelves in my closet and I found the beloved and "oh so close to likeness" portrait from my french artist. It's a keeper. 

Chalked that Block

Do you remember when I decided to give myself a little push? Earlier this summer after being a volunteer for the chalk art festival up in Salt Lake I decided I wanted to add "participate in a chalk art festival as an artist" to my bucket list. But I was planning on that festival which wouldn't happen until next year. I would have a nice lovely year to practice and slowly talk myself into participating. And then a wonderful friend sent a message to me about Chalk the Block happening at Riverwoods in a month. She told me I had to sign up. 

My stomach seriously dropped and the nervousness set in. 

See, I love doing my chalk art every summer on the sidewalk that lays to the side of my house. It's secluded, and no one can really see me chalking, and if my drawing completely sucks then that's fine because no one can see it anyways. 

But participating in a festival where you expand the size of your drawing, where people are constantly walking by and watching you. Where everyone can see your work... and if you end up making a disaster  good luck hiding it. 

But at the same time, I really wanted this experience. So I hurried and paid the entrance fee before I could turn back. 

And I'm so glad I did. 

Seven hours later and I'm done!

It really was such a fun and different experience. Thankfully I was tucked away in a corner and all the artists around me weren't there on Friday so I felt mostly alone. There weren't a lot of spectators either so I was able to get lost in my chalk. 

It was hard chalking in the parking lot. The surface was bumpy (as can see in image above.... it gave my picture weird texture) and it took a lot of chalk layers and rubbing in to cover the surface. 

A sweet little side bonus was that I got my picture in the Daily Herald! (well, I don't know about the actual printed paper but it was online!) 

I also got incredibly dirty. Black feet, black all up the outside of my legs from sitting on that parking lot. I took a lunch break and walked over to Subway and this cute lady behind me asked if I was one of the artists, to which I replied, yes. She then told me she could tell because I had chalk all up my leg...

I really was such a mess. 

But it was one of those things that you're almost proud to show off because it meant you just accomplished something worthy of that black tar. 

The chalk art festival went on into Saturday as well. I chalked all day Friday and finished so that I could go back Saturday and just meander around and enjoy the other artwork.  

Side note: My thighs have never ever been as sore as they were the following few days after chalking. I seriously could not walk normal and don't even ask me about stairs. It was awful. 

But it was completely worth it! And I'm so glad I was able to have the opportunity. I don't want it to be a once in a lifetime thing though, I want to continue to push myself and participate in more festivals down the road. I want to increase this talent. And my thigh strength. 

It's Happening

Be there.

Top 50

I came across this website today that has the Top 50 'Pictures of the day for 2012'. It's fantastic. Let me just share with you some of my favorites.

Sorry I had a really hard time limiting how many pictures I wanted to share from this collection. I love some of the titles they gave to the pictures on the website. But here's the site for the Top 50 'Pictures of the day from 2011'. Enjoy!

Math Doodling

Drip Drip Drop

Art for a rainy day.

Pushing Myself

Okay, I did it. I signed up and payed the money so I have to go through with this! No backing out now. Time for some sketching and chalking.
www.chalktheblock.net

Finally A Finished Project

In the past chalk art and I haven't always been on the best of terms. (Example here) But that's okay because every year I get a renewed sense of excitement and determination to make something happen. And I finally finished one of my drawings. 

This is after day one of a little over 2 hours work. (Sorry about the half shade, I forgot to take another picture later.)

And finally, a finished product that I feel good about. Total work time was around 3 1/2 hours. Not too bad compared to how much time I've seen people spend on their drawings at the chalk art festival. 

Yay for finishing projects!