What is Artist Arse Kicking?
Artist Arse Kicking is a year-long, online art club for people who’re pretending to be grown-ups but secretly long to play with stickers, glue and glitter.
If you’re looking for inspiration to help you fuel your passions, this is for you.
If you’ve been to art college and want to reconnect with a sense of playfulness, this is for you.
If you’re desperate to make things but you need some structure and the occasional shove, this is for you.
If you’re a beginner trying to find your creative path, this is for you.
If you don’t get enough time for crazy, selfish, thrilling projects, this is for you.
And if you just want to belong to a club with the word arse in it, this is definitely for you.
Will I have to draw?
Nope, nope, nopetity nope. You don’t even need to consider yourself a visual artist. The exercises have been designed to be used by anyone. I expect to have visual artists and writers signing up but all kinds of creative people are welcome in Artist Arse Kicking. I’d love to have dancers, performers, clowns, musicians, knitters, jewellers, ceramicists, lion tamers and accountants.
If you’ve got any kind of creative spark inside you that needs to be kindled, you can sign up.
How does it work?
Every week for an entire year, you’ll get some kind of creative push from me.
At the start of each month, you’ll get a juicy, new creative exercise to get you going. In between those main exercises, there will be regular emails, a monthly Twitterchat and secret downloadable treats like audio, video and drawings. If there’s a demand for forums, we’ll have those too.
What sort of exercises will we be doing?
Ooh, all sorts of things. I’ve written the exercises so that they’re fun, intriguing and challenging but broad enough to be applied to more than one discipline. So one month you might decide to concentrate on photographs. The next month, you might want to do collage or design a knitting pattern. There may be months where you decide to create a dance, write a song or make a performance video for your exercise.
The exercises are a bowl to hold your creativity; it’s entirely up to you which flavour soup you make.
How much will it be?
I don’t know yet. I’m going to do a poll in January 2011 to find a price that we’re all happy with. I do know that I will be offering Artist Arse Kicking as either a monthly subscription or a lump sum for the whole year. And those two prices will be the same because I don’t believe in penalising people who can’t afford lump sums.
What supplies will I need?
A journal and something to write with is the minimum requirement. But even that’s not set in stone; you could document your projects on a blog if you prefer.
You would also benefit from having the following:
a camera
glue and tape
scissors and a craft knife
brushes
coloured pens
gesso
paints
glitter, stickers and shiny things
old magazines
But I’m not prescriptive about what you should use – this is your creative journey, not mine.
Will I have to buy extra supplies every month?
Absolutely not.
I’ve written the exercises with the awareness that not everyone has a large stash of materials (although I’m betting that many of you do) or the money to splash out on new supplies. You’ll be informed beforehand if exercises require special materials. We’ll definitely be using glitter for one exercise, so you’ll need to invest in some of that if you don’t have any. Or just steal some from a small child.
Of course, you might want to buy new materials for individual exercises but that’s between you and your bank manager. I cannot be held responsible for any frenzies that occur in art, craft, fabric or hardware stores.
Can I blog about the exercises?
Sure.
Stuff like the interviews, videos and treats are super-secret and just for you guys but it’s completely OK to talk about the exercises. In fact, I hope this year will be so transformative that you’ll be bubbling over with the need to pass on your rekindled fire to others. I want this to be a creative movement!
Of course, some months you might feel quite private about what you’re doing and that’s OK too.
So, where did the crazy name come from?
Ah, that would be the fault of the lovely Tori Deaux. I mentioned arse kicking on Twitter and she piped up with the immortal words, ‘oh, you have to do a product called Artist Arse Kicking’ and the rest is history.
Ooo, ooo, I want to start right now!
Sorry, peaches, you’ll need to wait a little bit. I plan to launch Artist Arse Kicking at the start of March 2011 to coincide with the next Customer Love Challenge.