Creative Fun – Express Your Values

Make time for some creative fun – create a drawing using personal symbols to express your values.

Materials Needed:

Drawing paper – medium size

Variety of drawing pencils – 2H, B, 3B, 6B

paint or colored pencils (optional)

Clarissa's painting of what's important to her

kneaded eraser, ruler

Pre-planning
What are some of the things most important to you?  For me, some of the most important things are friends & family, painting, traveling, dancing, swimming, gardening, cultural and mystical studies and yoga.

Before you start your drawing take a few minutes to jot down 5 – 10 things that are important in your life.  You might be a dog lover, a musician, a hiker or a fantastic cook.  Since we’re all unique we’ll all have a different list.

Now we’re going to take another few minutes to decide on what visual symbols we can use to represent those things that are important to us.  For instance from my list I might choose a paintbrush and palette to represent my love of painting, an airplane to symbolize travel, and the Om symbol to show both yoga and mystical studies.  What symbols can you find for your important things?

Let’s Draw
1.We’ll start by drawing lines on our paper to create a large X. Using your 2H pencil, lightly draw a line from the top left corner of your paper to the bottom right corner.

2.  Draw a second line from the top right corner to the bottom left corner, thus creating a big X.  Be sure to draw this line lightly, as you might want to erase it later.    This big X creates 4 triangles on your paper. Put the most important symbol in the middle and 4 other symbols in each triangle.
Try not to get into details at first.   Lightly draw your symbols considering the whole page and the composition.

3.Once you have your composition down, then work back into your drawing with the variety of pencils.  In this way you create a variety of value tones, keeping some lines light and darkening and/’or thickening other lines.

4.  If you like you can use colored pencils or paint to finish your art piece.   Be sure to focus on creative fun the whole time.