What a great day! My friend Jean and her sister (my new pal) Ann, came over for a day of art!
Jean and I have been threatening to do this for a long time. It came up again in a Facebook chat and we decided if we liked it we should put a ring on it—er, set a date. We weren’t sure what we were going to do, but they both showed up with art supplies and I got out the stuff I’ve been working on. We talked and cut up fruit and set up munchies we could return to through the afternoon.
Somehow we decided to work from a prompt, and my writing prompt tin was there, so we each chose one and didn’t tell each other what we were working on.
My drawing is above. I worked from the prompt “What she wanted versus what she needed.”
The briliant Ann Pickard created this from the prompt “He said the word ‘church.'” The text in in the bubble reads “I’m sitting in my bean bag when I should be at CHURCH with my mom and my grandma LLEWhooo.”
Why is she not the Sandra Boyton of the mid-2010’s, I ask you!? Somebody needs to find this woman a book contract.
p.s. That prompt was given to me for my birthday by the fabulous Treacy Colbert from my writing group and was picked at random. When worlds collide!
Jean Pickard–who is also a terrific singer–created this astonishingly gorgeous piece in response to the prompt, “Something/someone stolen.” This photo doesn’t really do it justice and you have to ignore the background, which is a black plastic bag we put over the table, not knowing where the afternoon might lead us. She made this with torn tissue paper and stuff like Mod Podge. Wow.
Sometimes we take prompts literally, like I did. Sometimes a prompt makes me think, no. I don’t want to write about that, I want to write about x. Either way, I’ve tricked my brain into jumping past the block of the blank page.
This is the first time I’ve ever used a writing prompt to make art from. It was a little scary. But it ended up being fun.
We started around noon and were all amazed when we discovered it was 5: 15 and we’d spent the day talking and making art. Such smart, funny, talented women. Dang!
Any Given Sundry 
Your artwork is really good!
Keep up the great work!
Best Wishes,
Isabella
Thanks, Isabella…And congrats on the Stone Soup illustrations! They’re lovely!
Today was wonderful and inspiring. I had so much fun. I look forward to our next art day.
Yes! We must plan another. Too good to let drift away!
“Dang!” is right! What talented, fun people! (Actually, just coming up with the idea of using writing prompts to get you started was brilliant in itself.) I’m jealous.
I imagine that we’re going to keep doing this. Hopefully, we can schedule one when you’re here so you can play, too!
Sounds and looks lovely! Make it a regular thing! Who knows, you may break into song the next time! That would be the trifecta (art music and friendship!)
It could very easily happen. Jean and I have been talking about dueting. Time!
What a fun and lovely and soulful and expressive thing to do. So inspiring.