Love, Fear, & Flourishing 2.1

Love, Fear, and Flourishing 2.1 Exemplar PDF Download
26 8.5 x 11 inch pages
42.7 MB PDF
4-C & B/W
Print at 100% (NOT fit-to-page.)
$46

The definition of flourish is to flower. We all flower in our language, thoughts, hopes and dreams, body movements, voices, and in our relationships with each other and the beautiful big world we share. But most importantly, we flourish all by ourselves - our bodies do this automatically - we were built this way. Look at the branching of blood vessels in our bodies, how our fingers splay open or fan out like flowers, the growth pattern of the hair on our heads, all the many muscles in our face that produce a genuine smile. That’s flourishing.

Everyone can flourish, but it is a daunting task for so many of us to draw one on paper. This workshop or class is designed to create a sense of ease with the idea of flourishing. We will identify points of fear and anxiety in our approach to flourishing, that wobble our lines and tense up our bodies, and we will heal ourselves from these negative work habits that make any exploration, especially this one, an unpleasant task.

We’ll train the eye and awakening the body (fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders and breath) to align with each other. We’ll begin with identifying the unique capabilities of our joints and how they best function in relation to the kinds of strokes we are drawing, from the wrist, elbow, shoulder, and fingers. We will begin to train our bodies to capably reproduce the elements of flourishes that make them work and that our eyes have learned to identify: Ovals, Perpendicular Intersections, Intersecting Ovals, Parallel Strokes, Shade and Hairline Relationships, Accents, Textures, and MORE.
Working in pencil, straight/oblique pointed pens, and everyday pens (everything from felt tip, roller ball, gel pens, fountain pens, etc) we’ll memorize standard flourishing movements that have been around a long time, and how to adjust and vary their proportions to suit our needs. We’ll learn how to exaggerate ascenders and descenders, the crossing of t’s, and the endings of words. We’ll learn to curl these strokes around the graceful curve of an oval, so that our pens are never lost, our strokes finding their way back home, even through the most subtle of suggestions.

We’ll make flourishes that stand alone, work with each other, and that accent a word. And best of all, we’ll do this together.