Winter Art

Being forced to stay indoors does have its benefits:  one has the time to take on-line classes and get the most out of them.  Last winter, I  participated in"Mixed Media Vacation" taught by Julie Prichard. Her video instruction on blending was so helpful that I feel it was worth the price of the class just to watch her paint.

For this class, I used Strathmore Acrylic Paper that was 18 by 24 inches in size.  Although our instructions were to loosely paint or stamp some graphics on our background and then cut up the sheets to make booklets, my first exercise turned into a composition which I couldn't bring myself to cut up.  I went on to do a series, shown below at Gallery Eleven in Charleston. The one above will be included in the "Urban Flow" exhibit in February at Tamarack.

Art Walk

Acrylic on watercolor paper, adhered to 8x8 wood panel.

Thursday was my second "Art Walk" since joining Gallery Eleven.  This is a monthly event in downtown Charleston WV where galleries, stores, and offices with art exhibits have "open house" all evening. It is a great social event with music, food and beverages that I have enjoyed in the past as a walker and gawker.  Now that I have work on display at our co-op gallery, I have stayed in that location and talked to visitors.

It is somewhat frightening to have my art on display, as I am still insecure about the quality of my work.  Since it is abstract, the most frequent question that I get is "what does this represent?"

The piece at right got the most second looks and positive comments, and I rather like it myself.  It was part of a class assignment in the Jane Davies "Extreme Composition" class, and was intended to be a color field painting.  I started enhancing the color of the lower section, using a palette knife, and got a texture that became more like a landscape design than was intended for that exercise.  When I hung it at the gallery, I named it "Abstract 4/2013" just to see what folks would say.  Yep!  They asked the same old question. I usually reply, "What does it mean to you?" but would love to have a good "stop 'em cold" answer, which I'm sure many abstract artists have up their sleeves to use on certain occasions.

Having too much fun to stop and write about it

Fellow bloggers, does this ever happen to you?  I would rather read your blogs than write mine.  How very selfish am I!!  For those who still are following me (or trying to), I will try to do better.  Really.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been enrolled in Jane Davies' Extreme Composition class (on-line).  We started with experimenting with basic shapes and are now working with colors and textures.  Here are some of my experiments:

Squares, Two shapes and a line - ink and tinted charcoal

Background of pan pastels in my sketchbook, with stamping and collage

Acrylic paint and stamping on watercolor paper.

Acrylic paint and gel pens on watercolor paper

Experiments with color and texture - I made a color wheel!!

Catching up!

Life is never boring around here.  I'm sure you've heard about our big storm that knocked out power to almost everyone in West Virginia.  I was lucky - only losing power for one day, and I was able to share my air-conditioning for a few days with a less fortunate friend.  Many people were out for a week, and for some, it's been two weeks.  Those folks in rural areas don't even have water because they depend on electricity to pump well water.  How awful that must be!

Toni Kelly came to the Main Street Studio in Hurricane to offer a weekend workshop in June.  Toni is a mixed media artist who specializes in nature sketches.  Her workshop focused on techniques for incorporating images in art by using various transfer methods.  She also helped us with composition, color mixing and sketching techniques.  I finished one piece, an 8"x8" wood panel, on which I put down a background of handmade papers for texture.  The birdie is a sketch from my nature journal, which I printed on tissue paper and adhered with polymer medium.  I did the same with my favorite Emily Dickinson poem to complete the piece.

With all the extremely hot weather, it was best to stay indoors, and I have been trying to get my art supplies and collage materials reorganized.  Purrkins and Petey have been helping.  Petey thought I made this space in the bookcase just for her! Purrkins found a little space on my work table to squeeze into.











I'm still trying to get the collage materials sorted and stored in a way that I can find things. What I've learned from this process is that I should stop buying/collecting and just use what I've got, especially the art supplies. I found duplicates of paints and mediums that I didn't know I had!

Watercolor Sketching

It's Week 4 of Cathy Johnson's Watercolor Sketching class at Strathmore's On-Line Workshop site, but, guess what?  I'm still having fun with Week 3.  Fortunately, the lessons will stay on line for a while, so I can finish at my own pace.  Here are two nature sketches I did last week, using different techniques that Cathy suggested.

Art Journal - Watercolors!

I'm loving the Strathmore On-Line Workshop 2 with Cathy Johnson --Watercolor Sketching.  I have admired Cathy's nature journals and recently purchased her book.  Nothing beats having a live instructor, though, and the on-line workshop has given me the first opportunity I've had to learn from a watercolor pro.  We are two lessons into the course, and I've already learned a lot.  This is an on-going course, so it's still open to newcomers.

In last week's lesson, Cathy gave us a demo of sketching Basil, one of her favorite plants.  Naturally, my choice was the Hellebore.  Here's my page, on which I used some of her techniques.  One of those was "spattering" and it just so happened that the little vase I used to hold my flower had spattered spots in the glaze.  How serendipitous is that?

Back to Collage Art

After a rather dry spell (creatively speaking), I've started working in my art journal again.  Here are two pages recently completed.

For these pages, I started with a few collaged images and then did "ink doodles" that I saw demonstrated on Jane Davies' blog.  I love Jane's work.

I've also started a new on-line class - Layers of Memory and Imagination, with Serena Barton at Creative Workshops.  This has gotten my mojo going again, and I'm enjoying experimenting with some new techniques that she showed us in the first two lessons.

Faces!

Drawing has never been one of my talents.  I was never a "doodler" - even in my most boring college classes.  I much preferred to play "Hangman" with my neighbor or work puzzles.  However, as I've had more leisure time in recent years, exploring my creative side has become a passion and I have wished I could learn to draw.  Last year, I stumbled upon Carla Sonheim's on-line classes and enrolled in the "Silly" series.  Her sense of humor and playful attitude helped me overcome some of the mental blocks that I had about trying to "get everything Just Right".

Today, I downloaded the test exercise and watched the test video for her series on "Faces" that starts on Monday and can't wait til Monday to see what she has in store for us.  More information about her classes is located on her blog, here.   Hope to see you there also! 

Inspired!

I'm back in the groove again after a weekend workshop with Jacqueline Sullivan.  What a treat it was to be with such an inspirational teacher!  She not only teaches techniques, but also ways of culturing one's creativity.  Check out her work here.

This workshop was entitled "Visual Poetry," and the class was attended mostly by calligraphers, but it was all about layering meaningful words into acrylic art.  It took me a couple of days to get into the flow of rhythmic lettering, but I enjoyed the process and learned about the materials that are needed to be able to letter on acrylic paint.  Here is the first piece that I did with a lot of help from Jacqueline with lettering and finishing touches.

In addition to learning about using absorbent ground and workable fixative to prepare painted surfaces for taking ink, we also experimented with pan pastels.  Those are a fantastic way to add details and highlights to the finished pieces.  I had to order some right away when I got home and can't wait to use them to finish the other pieces that I started in the workshop.  I will post those when there are finished.

Art Escape!

What a wonderful month is April!  It equals October for beautiful color in the mountains of West Virginia.  Right now we have blooming dogwood and redbud trees, azaleas and tulips here in the city.  In the countrysides, there are fields of yellow mustard and bright spring green sprouting plants.  It's a great time to escape work and the daily routine.  It's the month of Artiscape - a weekend art retreat in Columbus, Ohio.  This was my third year to attend.  Yet, I can hardly believe that it's only been two years that I have been making art after attending my first art class ever with Amy Flowers (see her web site here)at Artiscape in 2009.  What a journey it has been.

Last weekend was this year's "art escape" that I had been looking forward to through the long and nasty winter we had.  The gorgeous drive to Columbus through farm country got me in the spirit of thinking "color," and a reunion with my mentor was just the ticket to get my creativity flowing.  My first class, "Rocky Road Collage" was with Amy.  We prepared a 12 inch square canvas with tissue paper and cheesecloth to create a textured surface for a collage.  I didn't finish my painting during the class (I love to do layers and more layers), so I did most of the painting part when I got home.  I love the quote that I used from Amy's great collection of rubber stamps - "Everything happens for a reason.. it's just a matter of moving your point of view around until you see it." 

Another class that really inspired me to paint was "Landscape of Dreams" with Serena Barton.  She gave us instruction and examples of painting with a palette knife.  I really love impressionist art, so this technique was quite exciting.  I started a little painting on an 8x10 canvas and, as usual, finished it at home.  This little painting is my attempt to represent West Virginia Spring.  I have much to learn, but that (learning) is the part I love best!

Final Pages from Visual Journaling Workshop

The on-line workshop on Visual Journaling (see previous post for links) has come to the final lesson and final homework.  Since the lessons were spread over four weeks, I had time to start and finish 5 pages.  Here are the finished products:

This one was a little out of my comfort zone, but I found this cool illustration of a face and magnifying glass in a magazine ad and decided to try to do something with it.  This is more along the lines of the example provided in Pam Carriker's lessons.

Materials used for these pages included:  gesso, acrylic paint, collage items (magazine material, scrapbook papers, and photocopies of my own art) charcoal and graphite pencils, oil pastels, chalk pastels, gel pens, and poster paint pens.  (Isn't it wonderful to find uses for all the cool art materials and supplies?!)

Journaling Workshop

One of my art priorities for the month of January was to start a new art journal.  Coincidentally, a couple of blogs that I follow mentioned a free on-line workshop sponsored by Strathmore Papers and taught by Pam Carriker, so I checked into it and signed on.  A new lesson is posted each week and we are now in week two.  (By the way, it's not too late to join the class, if you are interested.  Check it out here)

Because we have had snow and ice for the past week or so, I've had plenty of home time to watch the videos and do the two lessons.  In fact, I finished lesson two the first day it was posted and decided to start another page while waiting for the next lesson.  I believe the art work is nearly done, but the journaling part is still to come.

 The focus of the class is recycling our old journal art work by making photocopies of pages and using that art work in a different way to make a new page.  My old journal pages are mostly nature sketches and were not what I needed to follow the class instructions, so I improvised by photocopying a magazine picture for my first lesson.  I cut around the figure and pasted it down on a background that I had photocopied from one of my acrylic abstracts.

For the second page, I scanned a watercolor sketch that I had done in the manner of  Picasso's "La Lecture" and printed it in black and white for this recycling.  We use oil pastels for color and charcoal and graphite pencils for shading.  Gesso is used to blend the images and background and prepare the surface for journaling.

Come join the class.  It's fun!!

Silly Exercise 2.5

Silly Exercise 2.5
Originally uploaded by Calico Paint

I'm participating in a drawing class, The Art of Silliness-2, with Carla Sondheim (Check out her blog in the list below). I'm having fun with it because I'm learning to let go of my Virgoean tendencies to want to capture every detail perfectly. The first exercise was to draw upside-down birds.

This exercise was to fill the empty rooms with collaged items and fill in with drawings. See if you can tell what is pasted vs drawn/painted. Hint, drawn items might be a little crooked. :)

More Snow

Another cold snowy day, just perfect for working on the last exercise in my Photoshop class.  Perfect, because our inspiration was a snow scene with lots of white.  Very cool.  Mine turned out quite differently, and much more colorful.  That's how I want snow to be -- sparkling and glinting with the color of the late evening sun.

The only flowers blooming in winter are the hellebores, but mine are all covered with snow today.  Nevertheless, I had old photos stored away that I could bring out to remind me that winter is nearly over, and I used some vivid colors to brighten my day as I had to stay inside out of the cold and chill.

Another class assignment finished.  I think this is the last lesson, but I still have so much to learn!  This time I used the files that were given to me and I tried to follow the instructions to the T.  My colors turned out really muddy when I followed the instructions, so I brightened it and left it that way.  As I was reflecting on a title, "Send in the Clowns" came into my head and lyrics seemed to just fit ....well, I mean they fit better when I flipped "me here on the ground and you up in the air".

The Judy Collins fans will undoubtedly also note that I left the word "up" out of the text.  That's because the "p" on my other computer keyboard isn't working.  (Sad story about that, but I will save that for after I find out how much it will cost me to get it fixed.)

After staying up half the night last night, I finally got this Photoshop exercise done.  The challenge was to replicate a collage done by our teacher. She gave us an example and her photos of a rustic barn, a wire fence and a bird with a misty fog and the colors of dawn. As always, I wanted to do my own thing :) so I looked and looked through my photo collection to find a suitable barn and fence and bird.  I tried several things, including a squirrel, and finally composed the collage as you see it.  (The rooster is free clip art I had downloaded from Dover Publications).  Here's a link to D J Pettitt's blog, where you will see the wonderful digital collages that she does.  http://djpettitt.blogspot.com/ 

"Coalwood Memories"

Last May, a friend and I visited Coalwood, WV, the former home of Homer Hickham, the "Rocket Boy". We discovered this empty shell of an old schoolhouse, half-hidden by bushes and overgrowth of vines. It called out to me to explore the memories that still live there. This collage recalls the former students and their watchful teacher who once walked those halls.

My friends know that I have played with digital art for a long while, (and I mean played) but I have a lot to learn before I can claim to be proficient in Photoshop.  In early January, I started an on-line workshop with DJ Pettitt, a digital artist whose work I admire.  After three weeks of intensive work, I am putting some new tools to work and having a ball with Photoshop.  It can be frustrating at times, but it's usually a correctable error, such as being in the wrong layer.  Patience is definitely a requirement for doing work like this.  This collage has combined five different photographs with blended layers and masks, brushes, and artistic effects. The people photos are scanned from old photographs that I have been collecting from antique shops and estate sales.


"Wish You Were Here"

The wistful expression of the woman in this illustration I found made me want to use her in a collage.  I blended layers consisting of a photo of one of my own acrylic paintings as a background, the illustration I got from Dover Publications, a scanned antique postcard ("Hello Joyce"), and my own flower photos.

 

"My Dearest Sister"

This exercise in the DJ Pettit workshop had us blending layers and using the masking technique for the raindrops and butterfly.  The layers were a flower photograph, a photo of raindrops on leaves, a scanned postcard, and a photo of a butterfly on flowers.