…..day 46 and week six
I’ve returned to work on some more of the 50 creative exercises from Randel Plowman’s book The Collage Workbook. Evelyn Flint and her sister, Carolyn, have challenged themselves to work on one exercise each week and I’ve decided to join them in their challenge.
For week six we were instructed to take an image and cut it into two pieces and create two different collages. I found an image of a Joan Baez and Bob Dylan poster that I used for my two collages this week.
…my gift to you on day 45
…..days 42 and 43
Yesterday I left the house at 8:00 in the morning and didn’t get home till almost 8:00 in the evening. I spent the day cross country skiing but almost five hours of my day was spent on a bus getting to and from the ski centre. On the way home I pulled out my phone and my sketchbook and looked up some photos I had taken of flowers that I thought might make good subjects for sketching.
It was pretty dark in the bus so it was a good opportunity to work on my blind or semi-blind contour drawing skills.
Today I took those drawings and redrew them in a larger sketchbook, adding more detail and shading. With the rose I added colour with watercolours.
….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.
…..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?
…..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.
…..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.
…..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.
…..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.
…..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.
Mama Cormier 