Art Update

It's been several weeks since I last posted. Keeping busy with Jane Davies' workshop and posting work to the class blog. It's quite an adventure. Confronting many demons, slaying many dragons, learning a lot and enjoying the ride. She is a great teacher and I am so looking forward to working with her in person at the end of July.

Here's the work from Lesson 3. Starting with washes of color and adding to the shapes with scribble in different materials.



Definitely out of my comfort  zone here. Not sure what to make of these but here they are. I think I'm finding that I tend to overwork things. Activity 2 definitely helped with that!
 

I used some Windor Newton inks
I have had for YEARS on the the first three.
Added conté crayon to this one

Added black and white oil pastels to this one

Black and brown India ink with conté crayon
and fine tipped marker

Added white oil pastel and black India ink to this one

Brown India ink with orange WN ink; added lines with
brown India ink using a pen nib and the dropper

India ink with white and black oil
pastel and fine tipped marker

Then we created small compositions (7" x 7") with one painted shape, a shape made from collage paper and a line. Some with painted backgrounds, some on plain paper.

Then pages and pages of thumbnails creating simple compositions with line and shape.

Then we added color to some of the one-line contour drawings we did in Lesson 2.

And finally we did a fun negative space exercise painting the shapes around the object with a brush and India ink.

Sketchbook Practice Lesson 2

This week we worked on circles, circles and more circles! I had more fun this week and really just experimented as much as possible with colors and materials.Definitely out of my comfort zone but I did learn a lot and there are even aspects of some of the pieces I genuinely like.

Activity 1 — Circle Practice
I experimented with different combinations of circles using a variety of materials.

I experimented with thin Pilot Precise Point pen,
a bold chisel-tipped marker India ink, oil pastel
and Prisma color pencil.

Here I used black, white and yellow ochre acrylic paint. I particularly like all the texture. I used large and small bubble wrap (thanks Jane--I love this stuff), bottle lids, the bottom of bottles and a large cork stopper. I used a Pilot pen for the small circle of circles.

I started to use more color here and a little layering. There’s acrylic paint, the black circles are from the chisel-tipped marker some cut circles from paper I made awhile ago, some circles cut from some tissue paper I have and an eraser tip. I added elements with gold Sharpie and Pilot pen. I used some bubble wrap again, some smaller corks. One fun thing--I blotted up some of the purple bubble wrap circles to take some of the paint off and the blotting paper was so pretty that I just had to cut out a circle from it and stick it on.

These are a combination of  black acrylic paint, some pilot pen, oil pastels and watercolor pencils. I used some of the same techniques as in the other pages but in different combinations using different materials.

Activity 2 — More Circle Practice

Here we worked with layering circles using 2 or 3 different materials.

I really got into this activity and did several.
For this first exercise I used water color pencils
and then went in with Prisma color pencils.

Here I made a mask of cicles then painted a watercolor wash over them. I went back in after the wash dried with more watercolor. I love the depth created where it overlaps the pure white of the masked areas and creates the darker outlines. Then I went in with my fine point Pilot pen and doodled.

Then I did a couple using Jane’s technique of black/white/gray circles in acrylic with oil pastels over them. I love this combination of materials and enjoyed it so much I had to do two! I’ve never really worked with oil pastele before and I love them. Also, on this first example, I layed down a base wash of Hansa Yellow Medium and Iridescehnt Gold Deep (Fine) that I had left on my palette from something else. It gives the whole pieces such a warm rich glow.
This is something I know I will do again.

Lastly, I just had to try the “sgraffito” with doodles. 
Can’t wait to do more of this. Love the texture.
I added additional paint circles and I really like the
effect when it crosses the scratched areas. Also including
a couple detail shots of some of my favorite areas.

And this is one I didn't post on the class blog. It was a personal page with two quotes I came across that helped me along the way. I think this is my favorite of all because it was just for me.

Actvity 3 and 4

Some simple circle compositions and more contour drawing. The mostly blind contours were one-liners of moving subjects. I used Chubbles the cat who doesn't move that quickly but it was still challenging!

 Tomorrow it's on to Lesson 3.

Jane Davies Sketchbook Practice Class

Well I've been diving into My Year of Living Artistically with an online class with Jane Davies— Sketchbook Practice. It has awakened all KINDS of demons that I've been wrestling with. Particularly loud and relentless is my inner critic. Very difficult for me to "have fun" and "just play" but I am working on it and enjoying the activities more and more as I slog through. It's a great experience but not sure I would label it "fun" quite yet. Old habits (and voices) die hard.

I decided to post my "work" here so I have a reference. I did not post the first lesson on the class blog but I did post the second. Posting only a small selection from the first lesson "Drawing Lines".

Line Exploration, Various Materials

India Ink Scribble

Prisma Color Pencil and Charcoal Pencil Scribble

Graphite Scribble

Pencil and Pilot Pen Scribble

Emotimarks–Anxiety

Emotimarks–Fear

Emotimarks–Joy

Emotimarks–Solitude

Blind Scribble w/Color Added 1

Blind Scribble w/Color Added 2

Blind Scribble w/Color Added 3

Below are two blind contour drawings followed by three seeing contour drawings of the same object.

So this was Lesson 1. I will post each lesson as a separate entry.

Newest Beeswax Collage

Here's the latest. For this one I used lots of my own painted papers along with the scraps, napkins, tissue papers and other miscellany I've collected. My most ambitious to date and the largest (12" x 12").

One of the things I love so much about this technique is that I can create rich textures by layering elements with varying degrees of transparency. It reminds me of old stucco walls with years  and years of paint layers showing through as the building ages over time. I am so drawn to the layers of history and experience that these walls hold and I feel a deep sense of soul.  These encaustic layers also create a sense of depth and soul for me; images and small pieces of stories revealing themselves beneath the layers that overlap them. Or overlapping the images beneath but never fully covering them. The sensual elements of melting the wax to fuse each layer to the one beneath it and the slight fragrance of the melted beeswax complete the experience for me.

Repurposed Book

Opening spread of my first art journal. Took a bunch of things I really didn't like that much and put them together. Now I like them!

The Forgetting Room

I found this book at a flea market for $1.00. I loved the Griffin and Sabine books by the same author, Nick Bantock, so I bought it. I loved it. It's about a man who ends up going on a personal and artistic journey in Spain when his grandfather, who was an artist, dies and leaves him his house. His grandfather leaves a series of visual riddles for his grandson to solve and, as he gathers the clues, his own inner artist, his true voice, begins to reveal and express itself. I particularly like the story because his grandfather uses miscellaneous bits and pieces of paper and found items in his paintings, ie. collage. I read this book once when I first bought it, about 4 years ago but it seemed particularly timely reading it again this year during my own artistic journey.

Camellias

I love when they carpet the ground with their beautiful petals. Spring is here.