Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 12

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 think fearless is having fears but jumping. ”

—Taylor Swift

Inspirational Artist of the Week: Henri Rousseau

Born May 21, 1844, in Laval, France, Henri Rousseau attended the lycée there until 1860. While working for a lawyer in 1863, Rousseau was charged with petty larceny and joined the army to avoid scandal. He never saw combat and did not travel outside France, but his colleagues’ adventures in Mexico inspired him to create legends of his own foreign journeys. Upon his father’s death in 1868, Rousseau left the army. The following year he entered the Paris municipal toll-collecting service as a second-class clerk; he was never promoted although he has traditionally been called “Le Douanier” (customs officer). In 1884 Rousseau obtained a permit to sketch in the national museums. He sent two paintings to the Salon des Champs-Elysées in 1885, and from 1886 until his death, he exhibited annually at the Salon des Indépendants.

By 1893 Rousseau retired from the toll service on a small pension and began to paint full-time. The same year the artist met the writer Alfred Jarry, who encouraged him and introduced him into literary circles. In 1899 he wrote a five-act play entitled La Vengeance d’une orpheline russe. A waltz he composed, “Clémence,” was published in 1904. Rousseau became friendly with Robert Delaunay by 1906. In 1908 he began to hold musical and family evenings in his studio. Late that year Picasso arranged a banquet in honor of Rousseau, which was attended by Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Marie Laurencin, among others.

By 1909 Rousseau’s paintings were acquired by the dealers Ambroise Vollard and Joseph Brummer. His first solo show was arranged in 1909 by Wilhelm Uhde and took place in a furniture shop in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Rousseau died on September 2, 1910, in Paris. The same year an exhibition of his work in the collection of Max Weber took place at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery “291” in New York. He was given a retrospective at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911.

Handlettering Inspiration of the Week: Walter David Jones

Walter David Jones CH (1 November 1895 – 28 October 1974) was a British painter and modernist poet. As a painter he worked mainly in watercolour on portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and inscription painter. In 1965, Kenneth Clark took him to be the best living British painter, while both T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden put his poetry among the best written in their century.Jones’s work gains form from his Christian faith and Welsh heritage.