I’ve always loved that my name is Brooke. I’ve identified with streams and creeks my whole life, felt such an affinity with little moving rivers. I love creating in water. I love the shock of it, the abnormality of it. I love the organic movement, the softness of it, the tremendous power of it.

Create in or with water for this challenge. I’m especially eager to see what this brings.

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

I thought paper would be such a fun challenge because it’s so accessible and easy to make things with! From origami to fake snow, book pages and more. It is diverse and creative, and we’re diving in!

Use paper of absolutely any kind to create. Make a statement about recycling, use it to decorate a set, or open a good book. Make it yours, and make it fun!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

Is there anything more fun than thinking about finding a portal to a new world? If you’ve read Narnia, you know the magic of that discovery. I read books every day so I can experience that joy. I also love creating with that theme in mind. What objects or spaces can you see as a portal?

This is a really broad topic, so take that and run!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

Playing with the size of an object or a person or even a background in a frame can be so much fun. From creating miniature sets to editing someone to be small in a backdrop, there is so much potential to play with scale! Let’s play with scale this week and see what we come up with!

This could mean a lot of things, so try something you’ve never done before and see how it goes!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

Nude is a challenging theme, because it can overdone, done for the wrong reasons, etc. It should be noted that Implied Nude is an equal option here (and more friendly for social media). This could be anything – it doesn’t have to be full on! Nudity can be something subtle, tasteful, and artful. Let’s stretch ourselves to see what we can do here.

This may be way out of your comfort zone, but that’s why we’re showing up to these weekly challenges!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

I thought this would be a super fun challenge! You could use so many things as smoke or fire: baby powder, flour, smoke emitters, fire extinguishers, fog machines…and for fire: candles, lanterns, lighters, lamps, bulbs…

I just love the possibilities of this! Go to town!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

Surrealism is defined by releasing the creative potential of the unconscious mind. The idea is broad, and the results are limitless – after all, that is the point of surrealism. To never be constrained by your own limitations, our own smallness.

I love creating surreal works. It lets you break free of your conscious mind. We could all use a little more of that.

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

Yarn is the most interesting prop! It is soft, organic…can strangle, can mend…The colors are endless, the uses diverse. I have been using yarn in my art for the past 9 years, relentlessly. It carried a great amount of symbolism and I find it to be incredibly rich.

I can’t wait to see how creative you get with this! If you don’t have yarn, use rope or string instead!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

It’s no secret that I love using the color red in an image. Why? Because it’s evocative. It symbolizes so many things – blood, life, death, love, passion, anger….

No matter what it means to you, I hope to see it come through in your art!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

One of my friends, Heather, recently wrote to me “I see you as you are, soft and strong…” and those words really hit me. Soft and strong – how is that possible? I have often believed that to be soft is to be weak. I have massive issues in showing vulnerability to people I feel I should show command in front of. The problem is, I wrongly always see myself in a place of command, authority, and responsibility.

Over the years I’ve struggled tremendously with anxiety. Most specifically social anxiety, but it extends everywhere. From canceling tea dates with friends to refusing to attend entire events, I have too often let my anxiety cripple me.

But then again, I’ve also flourished in it. I realized early on where I fly and where I fall. I crave control, so if I am on a stage, I flourish. I know people are there to see me, so I take the control I was given and can seriously command a stage. But if I take on the role of my “normal” self, not the elevated person that people sometimes see, I flounder. A lunch with friends, a party…I shut down. I cancel, I won’t attend, or I try and I end up outside in tears.

All my life I looked upon softness as a defect. Push through, do what you have to. Don’t let others see your weakness. I know that were I in a room today with you, I’d still put that mask on. I know I’m not past it.

But I want to be. Many of us here are creative individuals – perhaps artists for a living or for a passion. We are largely drawn to that life because we feel deeply. I know that I feel deeply. But I find those deep feelings a very personal experience. I shudder at sharing it with others.

But I want to be, as Heather said, soft and strong at the same time. I want to learn how to be both, better.

I felt it was important to write this down here so that you know you’re not alone. If there is one thing I’ve always believed, it’s that if I feel something, I know someone else does, too. It also felt important to write this here because:

It is okay to be proud of yourself and still have moments of weakness.

It is okay to be confident yet still unsure.

It is okay to command a stage but flee from a party.

It is okay to be brilliantly yourself, even if that means you have mental illness.

It is okay. However you are is okay. I revel in myself today, all of my oddities and contradictions. They are what make me complex. And yes, that I know – I am wildly complex. Take ownership of that beautiful fact, because you are, too.