Artist’s Dates, Art Books, and Art Blogs
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Artist’s Dates With Your Kids
In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron recommends artist dates with yourself. She writes, “An artist date is a block of time, . . . committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. . . a play date that you preplan . . . you do not take anyone on this artist date.” On her website she says, “The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery.”
Last summer, I decided to adapt the solo artist date and create a family artist date—a playful time for creating, imagining, dreaming — together. Read “Planning For Your Summer’s Artists Dates” for all the details and links to the posts, many which were written by children’s authors.
Our Favorite Books About Art and Drawing
Spot the Differences Art Masterpiece Mysteries
Katie Meets the Impressionists (Preview here.)
We use and read these books regularly.
SEE ALSO: 13 Picture Books about Great Artists
What books do you use to draw and learn about art?
Short Stories for Middle School
Thanks for taking time to comment on my blog Melissa. “The Artist’s Way” is one of my favorite books and we’re a big fan of Usborne books around here too!
I wrote a post on the importance of nurturing the creative process for mom’s too!
http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/2011/02/nurturing-creative-process.html
and….here’s my post about my latest ebook “Exploring More Great Artists”
http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/2011/06/pink-and-green-mama-crafts-exploring.html
Fondly,
pink and green mama,
MaryLea
I LOVE this, MaryLea – thank you, I know my readers will love these resources as well.
Great post, Melissa! I really enjoyed The Artist’s Way when I read it way back when, and I had forgotten all about the artist’s dates. My daughter and I have these dates together just about every day, but I haven’t given one to myself in AGES! Thank you for the reminder!
Wow, what a cool idea. I have the Artist’s Way as a guidebook for myself but this post made me really think about how much kids would love this. I remember how my mom was always super super busy, cleaning, preparing, making everything just as perfect as possible for her 4 kids- all within 6 1/2 years of each other.
One of my strongest and earliest memories is of her sitting down at our kitchen table and drawing alongside me. She really entered “kid time” . . . and it meant the world. Plus she was AWESOME with crayons so I was totally impressed!
GREAT IDEA!
These are wonderful links you collated, Imagination Soup. Your list is such a great resource for parents. So many creative mom bloggers are instilling a love of art in their children and sharing it with others. Wonderful. Thank you so very much. h.
Thrilled to be included on your list, thank you.
you’re welcome – you’re awesome!