Assignment 8:
DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO
Hi friends,
Today your assignment is to make poetry (and/or nonsense) out of instructions.
You’ll need:
—Found Written Instructions* (see below)
—Paper & pencil & scissors, or a camera and photo-editing tool with cut & paste functions
Look around to find written instructions lurking somewhere in your every day life. They could be anywhere… on the side of the mac & cheese box, the back of your shampoo bottle, in a confusing multi-lingual pamphlet stuffed inside of the box of roof-top heat wires you bought at the hardware store… even in *this email* (my word, instructions are sneaky).
Select a portion of the instructions that is about 10–30 words long.
Write down that selection on a piece of paper, then cut each word out and mix them about.
Now, like you’re composing with those classic fridge magnet word sets… make poetry (or nonsense, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive).
This assignment was inspired by a bout of creativity-induced boredom on a plane ride I took last week! Here’s the drawings I made from it:
P.S. Tomorrow (Tuesday 12/12) is the last day to order from my online studio sale! I likely won’t run another studio sale for a long long while, so if there’s something you’re interested in, now might just be the time!
I’m planning to reinvest all the money from the sale right back into my creative practice. Thinking something along the lines of a desktop printmaking press… or maybe I’ll put it towards a mentorship with my favorite children’s book illustrator or tickets to the illustration conference that’s being hosted in Minneapolis this year… haven’t decided yet! In any case, I appreciate your support. <3
Fun!
Definitely a really fun assignment, i will try it tomorrow C3