365 Days of Art – Pigs Three Ways

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….day 41

I love art work with pigs. I don’t know why but I’m drawn to pigs. I enjoyed the blind contour drawings of the cows so much that I decided to do some with pigs. Rather than show you all my weird blind contours I’ll show you the rough copy of a pig I did for scraping technique with acrylics.

I found that the scraping technique this time around lost a lot of the detail of the pigs.

With the middle one I went back over some of the lines with a light green marker. I then decided to take a chance with a black micron pen I added some more detail to all three pieces. Should I have left them as they were? What do you think? I know how I feel about it but I wouldn’t mind your input.

fullsizeoutput_6c7f

365 Days of Art – Cows Done Blindly

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..day 40

In Carla Sonheim’s year-long class we were assigned to draw an object of our choice. The hook is that it had to be a blind contour drawing. No peaking at all. I did that with the first three and for number four I peaked a couple of times.

Then without looking at the drawings or the photo the drawings were taken from we had to draw the objects again on a larger piece of watercolour paper using ink with a dropper or liquid acrylic poured from the bottle (with a small opening). Before the ink or paint dried we were then suppose to lay two more colours of paint across the top of the paper and then scrape it down the page with a credit card.

The first attempt I did on a cold press watercolour paper and I almost lost the image completely. I switched to a smooth hot press paper and the image under the paint was stronger. The black ink on the second painting was overpowering and I much preferred how the red and purple inks turned out. Do you have a favourite?

365 Days of Art – Chinese Brush Painting

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..days 38 and 39

I started these late last night and then finished in the wee hours of this morning. So I guess that still counts as a painting a day.

I’ve always liked the simplicity of Chinese Brush Painting but there’s nothing simple about it. I can see why Chinese artists take years to master their craft. I took this book out of the library as a reference. It’s beautifully illustrated but I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at following directions from a book. I’m in too much of a hurry to take the time to read all the directions. I’m much better with a video demonstration but I did enjoy this process so I think I will go back and read some of the chapters.

365 Days of Art – The Bad With the Good

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..days 36 and 37

Not everything that I make do I necessarily like. This is a journey of learning and practising skills in art. I started with watercolour still life and then landscapes when I started painting at 50. I’ve dabbled in so many different art genres that I haven’t mastered one. I’m going back to basics. Here are two studies of apples and bananas. I need to keep practising.

fullsizeoutput_6c70 fullsizeoutput_6c71

365 Days of Art – Blue-Green Collage

Posted on February 4, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..another collage for the ‘colour plunge’ assignment

I’m really enjoy making these small collages. Randal Plowman has written The Collage Workbook and has set out 50 exercises to build up our collaging skills. Evelyn Flint and her sister are encouraging artists to join them on their year long art journey by making a different collage each week using Plowman’s prompts.

This is the third collage I’ve made for this one prompt ‘colour plunge’. The idea is to create a monochromatic collage using mostly one colour. Todays collage uses mostly blue greens. I used some of my text papers and finished it off with paint on bubble wrap that I printed on top.

365 Days of Art – Colour Plunge

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..day 34 and challenge #5 from The Collage Workbook

This week (I’ve finally caught up) Randel Plowman asks us to choose a colour and make a monochromatic collage using various shade of that colour. I’ve made two. The first one is mostly reds and the second one contains a variety of pinks. I’ve already starting using my art papers that I made yesterday. Check out Evelyn Flint’s colour plunge. They’re amazing.

fullsizeoutput_6c6b

365 Days of Art – Text Pages

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..day 33

Today’s class with Carla Sonheim was to create art papers using text. I enjoyed this process. I used watercolour paper and a variety of pens and ink to create these papers. I found a couple of poems in my Roald Dahl Treasury and I copied them onto some of the sheets. The idea is to fill the paper with words and try not to leave too much white space. I plan to use some of these in my next collage assignment.

fullsizeoutput_6c6a fullsizeoutput_6c69 fullsizeoutput_6c68

365 Days of Art – Colour Charge

Posted on February 2, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….day 32

I’ve gone back to doing more collage. This is from the Collage Workbook by Randel Plowman. It is assignment #4 where you apply colour to a collage that is primarily black and white. In the first one I added some touches of red using red paper and a red photograph and in the second one I added blue using a highlighter and chalk pastels.

Thanks to Evelyn Flint for starting this weekly collage challenge and introducing me to Plowman’s book.

fullsizeoutput_6c61

fullsizeoutput_6c62

365 Days of Art – Mug Shot

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..Day 31

Carla Sonheim posted a video about Chris Crites who paints mug shots on paper bags. I googled ‘mug shot images’ and found hundreds of photo of actual mug shots. Here is the one I chose to draw. Now I’m debating whether I should add some colour to it. What do you think?

365 Days of Art – Random Pig

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….day 30

Yesterday’s prompt from Carla Sonheim was ‘random pig’. I’ve wanted to paint a pig for awhile now so I searched the internet for pig images. I made two drawings a Micron pen. In the first one the eyes were too far apart and the face wasn’t long enough. I’m much happier with my second attempt. I’m that much closer to using paint for my next pig project.