How do artists do it? How do they come up with such crazy ideas? Artists often get their best ideas from everyday, ordinary experiences. Eating a bowl of cereal in the morning can be an opportunity to begin your day "thinking like an artist." You sit down. You scoop up some of those tasty morsels and all of a sudden--BOOM! A spaceship roars out of your spoon! How could that happen, you might ask? Why, it's "SUGARCHARGED!"

Thinking like an artist sometimes means making the familiar strange, the ordinary extraordinary. Try it out. It's easy to do, once you set your mind to it! (Have you got your artrageous hat on?)
Materials You Need: magazines with lots of pictures, scissors, glue stick, 9 x 12- inch background paper.

The Project: Go through picture magazines looking for things that might suggest an "artrageous idea." Don't go for your first idea (that's usually BORING!). Cut out several pictures and then try different combinations. You may need to carefully cut the original background away from some of the images you need. Consider changing size relationships as shown in the picture above titled "Big Baby." Try putting things together we don't usually see together.

Once you have an idea that you think really works, carefully cut out the shapes from their background with scissors (or an x-acto knife if you're older and have an adult's permission). Use a glue stick or white glue to secure your images to a new background paper.

When you finish, put a title on your new picture and show it to someone. If they say, "that's outrageous!" Tell them, "No, that's artrageous!"

Want To Do More? Check out the paintings of Rene Magritte and other Surrealist artists who combined images and things together in highly imaginative ways.

| @rtrageous thinking |