New! Nature-Led Art Challenge: Collage

Hello Nature-Led Friends!

It’s been a while since we’ve done something interactive! A few weeks ago, I learned about a “Learn Blender 100-hour Challenge.” (Blender is a free open-source 3D creation tool for making digital art.) As much as I would love to do the 100-hour Blender challenge, I need to focus on learning or refreshing other skills right now. We only have so many hours in the day, right?

If you have the time and inclination, I encourage you to make your own “challenges” to learn something new that you’ve been thinking about. I think a 100-hour commitment challenge sounds reasonable but write your own rules in a way that helps you break down a task into however many units of measure it takes for you to reach your goals.

No AI, the purpose is in the physical art of doing.

Below are two collages I’ve made as examples. I collected bits of twigs, moss, and other plant bits from around my yard. Collecting the bits took about fifteen minutes, the physical composition (playing with ideas and photographing took about a half hour.) Final processing included editing in Microsoft picture by playing with adjustments like Brightness, Exposure, Contrast and Sharpness. You’re welcome to play with picture settings too, of course. It’s part of the process. Since I didn’t use any glue, I was able to compost all my little bits when I was done which felt like an added bonus.

Collage 1: Fences

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Collage 2: Islands

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Are these the most beautiful collages ever? No, no they’re not. I could have worked on the formatting more and done better with the lighting to get rid of the shadows, but I’m working on not overthinking things so much. I decided I didn’t want to focus on perfecting the technicalities, I wanted to focus on the doing and the sharing. Sometimes you make “bad” art for the sake of making any art at all. Getting stuck in the weeds in the pursuit of perfection has not been a good return on my investment in time. The internal argument of “why make bad art” pulled lose an old memory about “Ralph Waldo Emerson and hobgoblins” and that was all I could remember. Once I stopped laughing at the visualization the thought brought to mind, I found the quote on ye olde internet:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (1841) – Self-Reliance

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What do you think? I’m always open to suggestions!

Another idea is to create a Nature-led version of Mad Libs. Mad Libs is a story game where people offer nouns, adjectives, verbs etc to be plugged into a pre-scripted story. I would pre-script the story, then ask for key nouns, descriptors and actions. If you volunteer a word, you may even find yourself in the story! I used to do this often when I did ESL tutoring to make money in college and for friends and family just for fun. You can even make it fancy and offer it as a low cost, personalized gift!

Have a wonderful week!

~Final note: If you click on the hypertext link of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s name above it will take you to more of his great quotes.~