Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 8

We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!

Here’s how it works:

We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:

Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet

Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy

We will be checking and sharing some of our favorites. AND… there may be surprise guest judges and PRIZES!!!

Quote of the week:

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

— E.E. Cummings

Inspirational Artist of the Week: Lydia Corbett

In the 1950s, Lydia Corbett was introduced to Pablo Picasso at Vallauris on the French Riviera. At this time, Picasso was breaking-up with his wife Francois Gilot, and Lydia’s presence brought a new and positive phase to his work. She became the model for a series of forty works of art. She was known then as Sylvette David, but changed her name during this period. The ‘Heads of Sylvette’ a series of moulded metal sculptures which Picasso worked on through this time, introduced a new major innovation in this work.

In 1968, Lydia decided to move to England and gave all her creative energy to painting. She has been exhibiting ever since and has had numerous shows in London, Europe and Japan. The Anthony Petullo Foundation, one of the most influential collections in America, has a collection of Lydia’s watercolours. In 1993 the Tate Gallery staged a major exhibition of Picasso’s sculpture and paintings. A documentary film on Lydia, and her friend and mentor, was shown on BBC2 at the same time.

Lydia’s beautiful paintings in both oil and watercolour sparkle and take on many subjects. Her fluid lines bring new life to these familiar themes, infusing them with warmth and sunlight. Her ‘assured and gentle approach to the human figure’, as one critic put it, recalls the work of Marc Chagall.

Her pictures are highly distinctive and immediately recognizable. She is very much an international painter and has many fans in the UK and abroad.

Hand lettering Inspiration of the week: Julia Warhola (Andy Warhol’s mom!!)

Julia Warhola was born Juliana Justina Zavaczki to a peasant family in the Rusynvillage of Mikó, Austria-Hungary She emigrated to the United States to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Julia enjoyed singing traditional Rusyn folk songs and was artistic. She loved to draw, and her favorite subjects were angels and cats. She also did embroidery and other crafts, such as bouquets of flowers made from tin cans and crepe paper. During the Easter season, she decorated eggs in the Pysanka tradition.

As a widow, she moved to New York City in 1952 to be near her son Andy.He often used her decorative handwriting to accompany his illustrations such as the book 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy (1954).In 1957, she also wrote and illustrated her own book called Holy Cats. She won awards for her lettering, including one from the American Institute of Graphic Arts for an album cover for The Story of Moondog, featuring the musician Louis Thomas Hardin in 1957.

In 1966, Andy made a movie called Mrs. Warhol (it was filmed in color and played for 66 minutes). The film featured Julia in her basement apartment in Andy’s house playing “an aging peroxide movie star with a lot of husbands,” including the most current spouse, played by Andy’s lover Richard Rheem.Andy follows her with his camera as she goes about her daily domestic routines.