More Ooglies

Now if you've been reading my blog all week, I know you'll have been wondering what the shape shifting Ooglies look like. Of course, the answer was there all along - anything they feel like (they are shape shifters after all!). Here are two of them who have popped along today to share the story of where they came from.

You see it all began around a week ago when I took the prompt from the group I'm working with on the Drawing Lab book (on Gumnut's blog). We were to squiggle some shapes in watercolour then draw fantastical creatures. I thought this would be a fun exercise to do with my son and even tidied up my work table in preparation.

Unfortunately he prefered to shoot things on the computer and even uttered the dreaded words... "But, I don't like art Mummy". WHAT? Doesn't like art? I'm cut to the quick... (Don't worry - he's a child, fickleness comes naturally, he'll like it again tomorrow.... I hope....)

Anyway, Mummy played with her paints and made a bird and an elephant with jelly legs, then she sat on the sofa and created the land of the Oogley Baloobleys while watching drivel on TV. Since then it's become something of an empire build (we even had shoe design on Wednesday), but I guess that was the whole point of the art exercise - to try something different, see where it takes you (in my case, a whole other planet!).

I just love to stretch and learn. Why didn't I have this burning desire when I studied art at school? I just stuck to what I knew best (encouraged down this path by my somewhat useless art teacher). What was missing from my education was the message that it was OK to create silly splodges, that experimentation was all part of the fun and a finished piece could look like it was created by a five year old if that was what you fancied. It seemed that as we grew older we were expected to leave the merriment of creation behind and focus on the technicalities - it was all about what was going to come up in the exam and that was all that mattered - the teachers weren't bothered that this ridiculous system was killing the creativity of their pupils.

It's different these days thank goodness. Some sensible head in a committee somwhere finally realised that a portfolio of work created over two years was actually a far better indicator of ability than one painting and a pencil sketch knocked up in a 4 hour exam.

I'm off to paint more random lines and see what magic starts to appear out of the paper. Maybe I'll even sign up to re-do my A Level Art...