Today I am participating in my very first Art to Inspiration and I’m excited to be a part of such a cool project! I discovered this unique collaboration through a few of my favorite creative bloggers and decided this month I would give it a go. Art to Inspiration is organized by Chevrons and Eclairs and is essentially a project to expose (and inspire) bloggers and blog readers to different mediums of art from around the world. Each month a piece is emailed out featuring the artwork of a young artist and once a month bloggers participating in the project can create a post to share how they have been inspired by the artwork.

Below is this month’s featured artwork by artist Lara Harwood (it’s gorgeous!), and then further down you will find a collage I created that was inspired by the piece.

 “…now imagine all the strong bird song thick as a forest.”
watercolor by: Lara Harwood

1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.

Back to school already? You must think I am out of my mind.

(I am wondering the same thing myself.)

I’m probably 65% ready to go back to school. This is a whole lot better than the 25% from last week and the near 2% from the end of June. But something about the word August (it is today!) has the wheels in my brain reeling and I am (sl-o-o-o-w-ly) starting to get that new school year excitement back.

Also, this artwork immediately made me think of the Jungle Book and then, Maurice Sendek’s Where the Wild Things Are. My first graders always get a kick out of Max and those Wild Things and I adore the book, too, so naturally I started googling lesson plans which started my teacher-engine running, a very rare thing for me at this point in the summer, but it’s what ultimately got me up to a 65% in back-to-school-readiness. Usually I am completely indifferent about going back to work until I set up my classroom, and that won’t happen for a few more weeks so I’m definitely ahead of the game— and I guess we have Lara to thank for that!

And then of course, I added a possible teaching outfit to the inspiration board soon after I added the books because as much as I adore summer I’d be lying if I said I’m not a tiny bit excited about fall school clothes. Actually, now that I think about it, I should have added some pencils, too. I’m crazy about new school supplies. But what person in education (or life for that matter) isn’t it?

Amright?!

It’s the little things.

+

Oh, and those creative bloggers I mentioned above? Check them out and their past Art to Inspiration posts— I love the original ideas they have come up with.

Hogger and Co.

C squared W

Sketch and Wash

+

Are you interested in Art to Inspiration? Click here to sign up!