As the new school year settles in and everyone begins to adjust to their routines, it seems like a good time for a dose of creative stimulation. With the loss of summer’s freedom, it can be tough to find time for scribbling, but fear not! Your next scribblin’spiration is here and this time it is… autumn leaves!

What better time to embrace the change in seasons and use them for our artistic gain? The beautiful changing foliage is all around you, providing inspiration each day. You might take this inspiration literally and focus on drawing trees and leaves. Go to a local park or look in your backyard for a great landscape sketch. Collect leaves to study, press, or trace. Or use them as a starting point to create something different, abstract, or even unrelated.

photo by Pantone, via Plenty of Colour

The beauty of inspiration is that it can take you anywhere—different qualities of the leaves can stimulate your mind, perhaps even an image or association you have with them may arise.

There are so many elements within changing foliage to find inspiration; one of the most noticeable is certainly color. The rich greens, golds, reds, and oranges create a glowingly warm palette for the season. Try using these hues as a jumping off point for your project or picture.

photo by Corbis, via The Guardian

Another interesting quality of leaves is their shape—each type of tree’s leaves boasts a different figure and you can find all shapes and sizes on the ground. Experiment with the scale and design of leaves to inspire your creation. Also consider large-scale shapes, such as whole trees or forests. How are trees’ shapes affected as the leaves begin to fall?

photo via Fermilab Today

Finally, don’t overlook texture. The green leaves emerge from summer smooth and supple. As autumn advances, those leaves become dry, brittle, and crunchy. Play with surface and touch in your work to explore this element.

What images or ideas to changing leaves bring for you? See how they influence your art all season long. All you have to do is peek outside your window for a dose of inspiration!

Time for a new dose of inspiration to get your hands scribbling!

Do you have a sweet tooth? What are your favorite sweets and candies to splurge on? We all have our usual preferences, but did you ever stop and think how wildly diverse candy is? Chocolates, gummies, sour candies, bubblegum, licorice, taffy, lollipops… the list goes on and on!

Image: Wallpy

Image: Dylan’s Candy Bar

That makes it the perfect inspiration for some scribble action. Grab your pencils, crayons, markers, or paints and get ready to explore the sweet world of candy.

The fun thing about sweets is that they’re just as yummy to look at as they are to eat. With bright colors, nifty patterns, and differing shapes and sizes, this sugary snack group is a feast for the eyes as well as the tongue. So it’s no surprise that artists like Wayne Thiebaud and Margaret Morrison find it such a fascinating subject. They focus on extreme detail and texture when creating their incredible still life works.

You can follow these painters’ leads and try your hand at still life sketches of sweet treats or take the inspiration a bit more conceptually.

Three Machines (1963) by Wayne Thiebaud, Image: Wikipedia

Gummi Bears (2008) by Margaret Morrison, Image: Art Fumes

Let the rainbow of vivid colors, bevy of interesting textures, and myriad of shapes and sizes inspire and inform your scribbling! Pay attention to the labels and packaging… or just focus on what’s inside the wrappers. Perhaps you’ll want to try an extreme close-up of a sour gummy worm’s texture, or a collage of your favorite treats, or even something totally abstract yet inspired by the elements of candy. Draw what you think a certain candy tastes like. Or use the color scheme of certain brand or flavor to create a picture.

Image: Sparknotes

 Enjoy your extra-sweet scribbling treat! What’s your favorite kind of candy?

Hi!  My name is Arlene Tucker and I am a teacher and artist living in Helsinki, Finland.  Last week I spent the day with The Tigers at Your School Kindergarten (H&S International School).  The Tigers is a group of children aged 5-6 years old.  During circle time, I wanted to share with them how our imagination works and what those images in our head are all about.  Also, I wanted to talk with them about how those pictures, stories, and feelings in our bodies can inspire us to create!

Johannes’ image expanded

Adrienne Moumin’s suggested art activity in her Scribble Shop Inspiration post gave me the idea to do this with the Tigers.  I think they really enjoyed it!

Johannes really took his time and completed the snowy forest.  I love how he continued the shadows and trees onto his own imagined picture.

For a good half an hour everybody was coloring away and coming up with their own stories from the unique magazine cutout pictures I then glued onto a piece of drawing paper.  In this exercise you can really see where your imagination takes you.  Another fun part was hearing what would happen next!

When Melissa saw this picture of a baby she thought that the baby is wanting something because her arm is reaching out.  Melissa figured that she is hungry so she drew the baby’s mommy holding a baby bottle filled with milk.  How thoughtful and creative Melissa is!

Melissa wants to make the baby happy

Anni takes us to space! Over there is Earth, Pluto, Mars, a space rocket and an astronaut venturing into the twilight.  Around every corner (or star) is something new and unexpected and it’s all coming from your imagination!

Anni take us to space!

Try doing this art activity with your kids.  Expanding your image exercise is suitable for all ages too.  You should do one with your child or student too!  You’ll never know what lies behind the borders of the image until you try.

For more information about the project please go to Adrienne’s post Exploring the expansion of your image and imagination.  Thanks Adrienne for the inspiration!

To see all of the Tigers’ pictures you can .  Share your pictures with us and we’ll upload them to the set.  Email for more information.

Did you know you could use art to be a secret agent? Well you can! With the right combination of supplies, you can make hidden messages and codes. You don’t need any training or fancy gadgets or powerful connections. All you need is white paper, a white crayon, and watercolor paints. Sounds pretty easy, huh?

Take your white crayon and write a secret message or draw a picture on the paper. Make sure to press firmly or go over it so that it really stands out. Can’t see it on the white paper, can you? Good. Now grab your watercolor paints and a brush and paint over your words or drawing. You can paint a picture, or one solid color, or a lovely abstract design. See how the crayon shows through the paint? Your hidden message is now visible… and beautiful, might I add!

Now, if you’re not in the mood to be a super secret spy but like the technique of using white crayon and watercolors, just make a pretty drawing or design for the fun of it! This simple trick creates a beautiful and unexpected look for a greeting card, wall art, or sketchbook page.

Never underestimate how far you can go with your basic art supplies. Many people find the white crayon to be useless, but these fun creations wouldn’t be possible without it! Give it a whirl and see what exciting pictures you come up with.

Photo: A Little Artsy

Photo: Alisa Burke

Who’s ready for another dose of Scribblinspiration (get it?)?! Last time, we looked at some jellyfish to get the creativity flowing. Now for a change of pace, let’s try something a little more open-ended to prove inspiration can truly come from anything! Even something as simple as a pattern or type of fabric. Try brocade for example.

Brocade is a kind of fabric that dates back as far as the Early Middle Ages. It’s woven on a shuttle and is generally made with silk and gold or silver thread (it doesn’t technically have to have gold or silver, but it often does). What’s fun about brocade is it doesn’t always look the same as it’s managed to make its way around the world.  You can trace it all the way back to Byzantium and it was originally worn only by nobility, but many parts of the world put their spin on it, from China and Japan to Greece, France, and Italy.

Today, brocade is used for upholstery and drapes, formal clothing and costumes. Let your imagination run and see what this pattern inspires for you. Maybe the gorgeous flourishes take you somewhere abstract. Perhaps it brings to mind royalty from another time or a lavish ball with everyone dressed in their finest. Maybe all the silver and gold or rich jewel tones get you going—remember, even just the color scheme can serve as inspiration. I see flowers in many of the designs and that makes me thing of a fabulous garden. Since it’s a fabric, maybe it makes you want design your own costumes or modern outfits or even rooms inspired by brocade. For those of you crafty sewers out there, feel free to take the inspiration literally and try using brocade or something similar like damask or brocatelle to actually create something.

See? There really are a lot of possibilities, even with something as simple as fabric. Give your imagination the royal treatment and see what happens!

I really like a cartoon called Adventure Time so I draw a lot of that.

Adventure Time drawing by Chase, 12 years old

This is one of my recent realistic ones.

Realistic Drawing from Life by Chase, 12 years old

My realistic drawings usually take awhile. This one maybe took thirty minutes. I really like drawing little cute colorful drawings because that’s really what my personality is.

I’ll be drawing more realistic drawings soon and I’ll be sure to send some pictures to Scribble Town, so maybe you’ll see them here.

A few of my drawings are on the page.  You can share your drawings there too!

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Happy Friday, Scribblers! Can you believe that on Monday it will be October already? I sure can’t. September really flew by. Now’s a perfect time to pause for a moment and think about what you’ve done so far this season, and what you’d still like to do. There’s still plenty of time! Any good plans this weekend? Maybe a little scribbling? Here’s a nice dose of creative inspiration—autumn edition!—to get those hands drawing!

-Draw a beautiful tree in autumn. Are its leaves changing color? Are they still on the branches or have they fallen to the ground.
-Make a birthday card for Johnny Appleseed
-What are your goals for this school year? Show them in a picture!
-Draw a scarecrow fashion show
-Create your ultimate Halloween costume. The sky is the limit!
-Draw the spookiest house you can imagine!
-Draw a family of Jack-o-Lanterns. If they had a pet, what would it be?
-What are you most thankful for this year?
-Design your dream tree house
-Draw a comic strip about a day of apple picking

Have a fabulous, creative, fall-filled weekend!

Hi Scribblers,

Do you like to color? Coloring, scribbling, drawing….these are all great ways to explore your creativity. Sometimes you can sit down with a pen or pencil with an exact thought in mind and try to draw it, but if you aren’t an “artist” you can still exercise your creative skills!

Simply sit down with a blank piece of paper and a crayon, pencil, marker or pen and simply start to color. Where do the squiggly lines take you? What will you draw? You may not konw at first, but as you continue to squiggle and scribble all of a sudden you may realize that your mind is starting to draw something!

See…

At first I simply started with the orange marker at the center and started to scribble on the paper. Before I knew it, I was drawing a rose!

What will you create? Share your drawings, scribbles and sketches with us on our Scribble Shop page!

Hi Scribblers!

I hope you are enjoying Zoo & Aquarium Month! Keeping with the theme, today we made an elephant friend!

Do you encourage your kids’ creativity? Drawing and crafting is a great way to inspire their minds and a fun way for them to express themselves. Not only for the kids,  these benefits apply to moms, dads, teachers and caretakers too!

Would you like to make your own Elephant Friend with the kids?

Just click on the image, download and print!

We’re almost half way through Zoo & Aquarium Month! Have you taken your  kids to visit a local zoo or aquarium? Taking your children to zoos, aquariums, planetariums and museums is a great way to educate and broaden the kids understanding of the world and culture. It is also a great way to inspire creativity!

As the kids come across new sights, new creatures and revelations, their minds will soar with questions, curiosity and a desire to share those experiences with others! Coloring and drawing is a great way to do this!

To relive the memories, encourage your kids to draw what they saw!