Results of an online course

These are a few of the experiments that resulted from an online course I recently took. It was great fun but I didn't quite finish it because there was an unexpected break of one week just before the last two weeks' classes and it threw me. I am very easily put off finishing things but was going great guns on this course until the halt and I just couldn't get myself going again.

This something that I must address - again!

Monoprint

This was great fun to do and is part of the Art of Abstraction course I'm doing. It's acrylic paint on a Gelli printing plate, scribbled over with a cotton bud and printed twice which is why one of the prints is paler and less textured. I love Gelli plates - they're so easy to use and worth exploring using different mediums.

Oh, and I fiddled around designing a new banner for my blog!

FINGER PAINTING FUN

This week's first assignment for the Experimental Art e-course I'm doing is finger painting. Using acrylics the only instrument you're allowed is your hand. I never had so much fun in my life. The mug may look a bit wobbly but I think it's recognisable - just!

This one is more abstract - I just love the colours and I even used my nails in this one. I think it's going to take me the rest of the week to clean myself up. A wonderful back-to-childhood exercise!

Zuni Fetishes

These are mountain lion and bear, my Zuni fetishes. And believe me, they're not bright orange and yellow really! I love them and really want to add wolf but haven't been able to find one yet.

This was a classic case of fiddling. I started out on a blank page and decided, instead of using pen and ink and then painting, I'd draw the little sculptures in watercolour pencils and have no outline. Well, that didn't work because I still had an outline which I couldn't get rid of even after using water over the pencils. And they also looked really dull colour-wise! That's fine in the flesh but no good for a drawing I decided. So I went over the watercolour pencil with some liquid watercolours I have. That's where the bright got in there! Then I thought I'd outline them with pen & ink. Then I decided they needed shadows which ended up looking a little clunky. And then (!!) I recalled reading in a book on art journals about making a background on a page by sponging acrylic paint through plastic tapestry canvas. SO I DID THAT TOO!

There can't be many people who put in the background after the foreground surely? Anyway, I left it on my desk for a while and visited it every now and then to have another look and then I decided, to hell with it - I'll post it. It's been too many days since I had something to post and I've been feeling a little out of sorts about that.

So here it is folks. Another PC mess! Or maybe I'll call it 'quirky' which is probably the same thing.

PS. As I'm writing this I'm listening to the most fabulous operatic compilation CD - truly inspiring.

First day of Journaling

I started a new sketchbook which I'm going to try and keep for journaling as opposed to just sketching (with a few comments!). I've begun to read Gwen Diehn's book, The Decorated Page, and decided to try and work through it.

This is my first attempt and is based around some ears of wheat I collected on my walk with Misty yesterday. I'm a little unsure of exactly what a journal is supposed to include, but think it's probably just anything and everything that grabs my mind or reflects my day. Whether I'll be able to keep this up every day is very doubtful, but a few times a week would be good. And especially those days which have a real impact on me for some reason - sad days, or happy days or just grrrrr days (like today has been so far!).

This entry was drawn in pen & ink and coloured with acrylic inks. The journal is a Fabriano one with really heavyweight watercolour pages and a snazzy red and white patterned cover. Very yummy and it took a lot of courage to make the first mark!

Still working on the 'backgrounds'. So far lots of mess plus one rather nice one that I have no idea what to do with!

I also did a quick sketch for one of the EDM subjects. Pen and ink and watercolour this time and in the old sketch book.

My first figure drawing

This is my first ever figure drawing. I copied her from a photograph in a magazine. I can list a whole lot of things that are wrong with it but I'm not going to because it's my first and I'm not unhappy with it. If I really was unhappy I wouldn't post it!

I need lots of practice before I'll have the guts to try a living, breathing person I think because the trouble with people is they move! I need them to be absolutely static for now to give me time for all that erasing and re-doing. I did it in pencil first until I thought it looked OK and then I drew it in ink and put in a little watercolour. For some reason the scan seems to have put some dirty marks on it - I think this may be a shadow of what's painted on the other side of the page. Note to self - don't paint on the back of other paintings or the scanner will pick it up.

I'm still working on the background applied with a roller - I did a page yesterday and was really pleased with it. It had lots of texture from the roller as well as colour. I just applied small blobs of Viridian and White to the page and rollered over it. I had to put a little more white on top of the darker green because it was too dark but the overall effect was just what I wanted. I should have posted a picture of it as the first stage of a journal page, but I drew some letters on top of the background and painted them in acrylic ink, the idea being to decorate them on top of the ink. But two things went wrong - I picked complementary colours for the letters and it didn't work, particularly because the background colours showed through and made the letters look really muddy. And acrylic ink has a sheen to it which didn't look very nice.

So I've treated it as a learning experience and will do another background and go from there. I'm wondering whether the acrylic has enough texture in it to mark some patterns into it before the paint dries. I'll experiment and see...