WOYWW #207

Well I totally flaked out about it last week and didn't take any pix of my workdesk for the WOYWW linky party! That is what the end of school days does to me! 2 more weeks and then 10 weeks of vacation! Then next year is my last year at work! Not that I don't love what I do but it is TIME to retire!

So last night I was looking at all the stuff from that watercolor class last weekend and decided to take a photo of one of the techniques I hadn't shown already. And before I go on I want to say: I HATE THE NEW FLICKR INTERFACE!! Takes a LOT longer to get my photos to blog!

This is what we did: made an abstract watercolor and let it dry. Then we took a small frame (a card with a hole cut in the middle). We cut out three areas that we liked in the abstract.

And then he gave us blank cards (from Kelly Paper) and we glued the swatch on and voila! A mini-painting!

These are the only 2 brushes we used in the class! I love how the calligraphy brush held the paint -- might look into getting other sizes of it.

Linked to:
WOYWW
Paint Party Friday

Watercolor class...

Yesterday I took a 7 hour watercolor class @ the Learning Exchange in Sacramento. It was taught by local artist Robert Dvorak. All in all it was a great class but I did discover something about myself: 7 hours is way too long for me to be in any sort of class, fun or not! I was exhausted when I got home! I was reminded of that old Far Side cartoon about being excused from class because my brain was full! I think my learning curve started petering out around 3 pm...

But none the less, I learned a ton of techniques and came away with a much great appreciation of watercolor as a medium.

And... came away with the total appreciation for needed a LOT of practice to get good at it. It was quite the challenge!

We used a 7"x10" watercolor block and did a lot of exercises and techniques. Here are a few of my meager attempts...

Mountain with waterfall:

People:

Trees:

Banana:

It was a fast-paced with lots of laughter and fun! A couple of other things I learned about myself: I need to wash my hands more as evidenced by the dirty smudges on my examples, which I did not edit out due to sheer laziness on my part this morning! I also need to move my shoulders and neck around more -- I was very sore when I got home. Even though we had a lot of breaks and up and down times moving out paintings out to dry, I think when I paint I tense up too much and was definitely feeling it when I got home. Relax Rhonda!

Linking to:

Mandarin Orange Monday
Blue Monday
Monday Mellow Yellow
Creative Every Day

Free journal backgrounds...

I am trying something new. I would like to start a semi-regular posting of free backgrounds, gelli prints, and other things you may use in your artwork. I am scanning them @ 300 dpi so you can resize them to your needs. I hope this will work so I would like to ask you to try them out. I can scan them at higher dpi (600) but they take some much more computer space so I am hoping this is a good compromise. I would LOVE to see how you use them so please feel free to post your link to anything you make with them in the comments. Credit back to where you got them is also much appreciated. Thanks

Let's try this!

WIP... Intuitive Painting

Recently I discovered the idea of Intuitive Painting (a la Flora Bowley) and decided to try my hand at it. I got Flora's book and read through it and when I got to the end realized I still had no idea how to start, so I scoured the Internet, devoured You Tube videos and sort of figured out the following: put paint on your canvas (or paper), put more paint on, add more paint over and around the other paint, keep going until some shapes emerge that speak to you, highlight the shapes, fill in, paint more and eventually it is done. (ok maybe I oversimplify). Oh yes, and add music and move around to get all those life forces (or whatever they are, maybe just my bowels) moving while and between paintings.

So here is a small progression of what I have done up til now. I am still working on it and will do so probably a good while bit this is the last few days work. Maybe when I am done I will make a short Animoto video to run through the process. I am taking photos now and then when I remember to document the changes.

Working with acrylics, paint pens, and inks on an 11" x 14" canvas board.

Linked to:
Paint Party Friday
Show and Tell Saturday
Mandarin Orange Monday
Inspire Me Monday
Creative Every Day
Blue Monday

WOYWW #205

I have been working on some painting and art journaling the last few days so my work table is scattered with those things. Well, it is rather neat now because I put a ton of stuff away this last weekend so I could actually GET to the table!

And of course my favorite part of the newsprint pad is the random color that is left behind...

I have been into circles again lately... (various WIP)

The art journal pages were both basically the same at first then I changed the left one to see what would come through when I painted over all the doodling and stuff underneath... I like where it is taking me.

Linked to WOYWW.

Working on the 21 Secrets class today...

I decided to pick another of the 21 Secrets workshops that had doodling and working a bit outside my normal zone so I picked Roben-Marie Smith's Baby Got Back-to-Back class to do next. I have enjoyed Roben-Marie's work for many years and have taken a class or two from her here and there but have never attempted to do a journal page in her style, which is how this workshop starts out. HERE is a link to her wonderful journal page tutorials!

So the workshop starts out by making a journal page in her style, which actually took me 2 days. Once again I was working on pages I had taken out of the 9" x 12" Canson Montval Field All-Media Journal. I decided last night to start by making 2 pages so it took a little longer, and then part way through I wanted them to dry completely so I left them overnight. I made 2 pages because one of them has to get cut up for the book part of this workshop and then I would have an extra, although now I have to decide which one I want to keep and which to use for the Back-to-Back book part of the workshop!

It starts by adding color to your page (painting and gelli printing):

Then some collage and stamping:

Then lots more inking, painting, doodling...

And finally both finished pages.

What I enjoyed about this part of the workshop was using colors together that I normally do not use much of and making a page much busier than I normally do and having it look nice in the end. What I found difficult was having to constantly go back over things and doodle more or fix doodles that got covered or painted on that I wanted to show, and the general fussiness of working these pages. It sure looks easy when Roben-Marie does it but it takes a lot longer than I thought!

But I gotta admit, these are two of my favorite pages I have done lately! I think I will incorporate some of this working over and over in my art journal pages now and see where it takes me! Thanks for pushing my envelope Roben-Marie!

Playing with more gelli prints...

Started doing up a bunch of lighter colored gelli prints for additions to art journal pages and scanned one to test out how it scanned. I didn't like the plain scan all that much so I started playing with the colors in PaintShopPro (my cheapo version of Photoshop) and made a mosaic in BigLabs to see some of the various colors I adjusted it to. The darkest one I made a negative of the colors. I have not played around with PSP for a long time and I had forgotten a lot of the cool things it can do, so I think I will be playing with it a bit in the coming weeks.

This was the original scan:

Linked to:
Pink Saturday
Colorful Journey Gelli Party
Ruby Tuesday2
Mandarin Orange Monday
Mosaic Monday
Blue Monday

Another painting with those lines...

I had so much fun using that silicone pastry brush to make lines on the last painting that I did another one, similar but larger (9" x 12" on canvas board) and with more little lines!

I am realizing I have no idea how to NAME an abstract painting! So for now this one is Window Reflections. That might change quickly if someone gives me a better idea for what to call it! Feel free to leave suggestions!

Linked to:
Orange You Glad It's Friday -- Take a look HERE-- she featured one of my other paintings! Wow!
Creative Every Day
Paint Party Friday

WOYWW #204

The last couple of nights I have been reading a lot of art blogs (in a never-ending attempt to catch up!), watching videos from various online classes I am in, and pulling out the watercolors to try a couple of techniques and play a bit.

So this is what is on my desk today until I have more time to do more watercolors. This is from a VIDEO I saw from Whitney Ferre (one of the 21 Secrets teachers but this was a separate video on You Tube), where you just doodle or scribble with watercolors. It is so out of my box that I am trying it just to see if I can do it. My first instinct is to grab the markers and go that route, so these last couple of nights I have been playing with the flow of watercolor, looking for a more zen-like approach.

Anyway, my desk as I last saw it while I pondered my results...

Linked to: WOYWW

Sunday painting...

Spent a lot of today so far playing around with paints, catching up on art blog reading, and generally avoiding cleaning up my messy art room.

So... remember this? A bunch of orange, black and white on a 6" x 6" canvas board...

Well this is what it morphed into...

I am calling it "Wormhole".

Question to my painting friends: How do you display these small 6" x 6" canvas boards?

Linked to:
Mandarin Orange Monday
Inspire Me Monday
Monday Mellow Yellows
Create Daily
Blue Monday

In our garden...

Such pretty creatures!

Linked to: NF Winged

Looking for pink...

I wasn't sure I had any more pink journal pages for today's Linky party but I found this, a journal page I had done for the Journal Fodder 365 group I am doing over on Ning. Not sure that I ever posted it anywhere even, maybe I meant to do more on it but now I have forgotten...

It's on a gelli printed background, traced around my hand and colored in with pan pastels. Then I sprayed fixative so the pastels wouldn't brush off and wrote the caption with black and white markers.

Linked to: Pink Saturday

I think this one is finished...

I am not actually sure when someone is sure that a painting is done, but this one seems to be done to me, so I guess it is. I showed it last Friday HERE when it was almost done but since then I added a bit more of the blues/greens... It needed more dots! I guess technically it is mixed media since it is all painted over a layer or two of collaged book pages and music paper. The size is 10" x 10" (25 cm x 25 cm).

Also not really sure what to call it so for now it is Sun and Rain. That could easily change...

Linked to:
Paint Party Friday
Orange You Glad It's Friday

Creative Dare for April...

Over on Tracy Weinzapfel's blog she lists the April Creative Dare challenge as "Pick 5 words that describe yourself"... so these are my 5 words for the moment. I actually have more words so it was hard to choose, but I liked these 5 the best this evening:

This was done in my smaller (7" x 10") art journal that is nearly full! It is a background of gelli printing and stencils, with various inked circles and writing. I actually had the page background done for a while and it wasn't until tonight that I found a use for it.

Linked to:
Creative Dare
Art Journal Every Day
Show and Tell Saturday

WOYWW #203

When I looked this morning it was more like what was on my workdesk left over from last night's Gelli plate playing...

Here are a couple of the stencils I used for the red and black gelli printing session last night:

Linked to: WOYWW

Seek...

I was looking in an old art journal from many years ago (this page was dated October 2006) and I found this entry that I have always liked. I thought I would post it here, guess I am still seeking...

Linked to:
Glue it Tuesday

Some red and black in progress...

Not sure what I want to do with these yet but I got home and felt like making something in reds and black so I got out the trusty Gelli plate and whipped up some layers of red and black stencil play.

Linked to:
Ruby Tuesday2

Mosaic Memories...

I was looking through some old travel photos from Spain in 2003 (hard to imagine it was 10 years ago!) and found these lovely reminders of Parc Guell mosaics in Barcelona. I adore Gaudi's work and this park is such a wonderful display of some of his whimsey.

Linked to Mosaic Monday

Colors Challenge...

This is what I made from my colors challenge with Leslie -- we picked 5 colors from Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party painting and made art journal pages with them. These were the colors:

And this is what I made with them in my 9" x 12" art journal:

It started out as a gelli printed background, then I painted over the edges and made the face, made the flowers with Posca Pens and collages on a printed quote. Rubber stamps are along the outer rim. The challenge was keeping to just those 5 colors (and white/black)... and it turned out to be a lot of fun working on it today!

Leslie posted her entry on her blog so you can see how different they were!


Linked to:
Monday Mellow Yellows
Colorful Gelli Print Party
Art Journal Every Day
Blue Monday
Creative Every Day
Simon Says (Color challenge)

Finished Doodles Page

From the online workshop: 21 Secrets. I think I have finished the Doodle Your Way class page!
Remember here it was last look:

And as of this morning, here is what I think will be the finished page. I am finding with these doodles however, that I often go back and add a little something... so who knows. But for me, it is done and I will go to another one of the 21 Secrets next!

Linked to Mandarin Orange Monday

Finally Friday...

Yay it's the weekend!

So when I got home today I played around with some paints and thought about the weekend and what I wanted to do artwise. Not decided yet, so I will just stay open to a visit from any muse that happens to pop into my neighborhood and go from there!

I want to work more on this. So far it is layers of collage (book pages and music paper) and inks and paint on 10" x 10" canvas. The blue is one of my stencils. Not sure yet what I want to make with this background.

Amazingly it has both orange AND blue! And no doubt will have a lot more as it gets done!

Linked to: Paint Party Friday and Orange You Glad It's Friday.

More doodling and WOYWW...

I wish I had remembered to take the very first steps of this doodle page but I didn't so here is the first photo I took for the Doodling class of 21 Secrets:

and then I showed you what I had gotten to last Sunday:

and here is what I have since then... it is a slow process for me.

And it is also what is on my workdesk today!

Linked to: WOYWW