Art Ed

I'm taking an Art Education course this semester. My professor is oddly reminiscent of Madam Mim... she hasn't broken into song yet, but she does have frizzy hair (not purple, though I have a DIFFERENT teacher with purple hair) and wore pink and purple on the first day of class. 

Madam Mim and Merlin from Disney's "Sword in the Stone"

Anyway, I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing in Art Ed yet, but I love the class. Mostly because it's a chance to doodle and play with colored pencils!

This is a "zentangle" I did to decorate the cover of my sketch book, I actually started it before the semester began in my notebook, Rick estimates I have about 20 hours into it. It's oddly therapeutic and the more detail you add, the harder it is to find where you mess up.

We were instructed to save the first couple pages of our sketch books for our "contents" pages. I jazzed mine up a bit because content pages are boring. 

We had to find an "inspiring quote" about art or creativity. I picked "There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds" by G.K.Chesterton because it reminded me of one of my favorite movies "Howl's Moving Castle" - So I did a doodle inspired by that to accompany my quote. 

The "castle" from Howl's Moving Castle

We also were assigned to find a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. so I found "We must use time creatively" and drew the insides of a pocket watch. I gave it the "serial number" 1151929MLKJR441968 which can also be read as
1-15-1929 MLK Jr. 4-4-1968 his birth and death dates,
and the pocket watch in the middle is stopped at 6:01 - the time he was shot.

My biggest problem with all these "find a quote" assignments, is that I do exactly what everyone else in my class does, I hop onto brainy quotes, or the quotations page, or pinterest, type in a topic or person and just pull one that catches my attention.
With the art quote I wasn't as frustrated, find a quote that inspires your creativity, okay fine, not a lot of context needed, but Martin Luther King Jr.?
Without the context of his background or the civil rights movement and the part he played in it, it's meaningless. You can't look at the quote "We must use time creatively" and know that he wrote that in a letter to his fellow clergymen from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 after said "fellows" criticized his methods in his crusade for civil rights.
The quote caught my eye because his time was cut short and I instantly decided I wanted to draw a pocket watch, most probably because I find circles aesthetically pleasing,  but I only read the actual letter AFTER I'd done the doodle and now I'm considering revamping my sketch to play more into the situation in which it was written.
It's not due till next monday. I have time to play.