…..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?
….making up for my non-painting days
Carla Sonheim’s post the other day had us use the scraping method to make a random blob shape onto watercolour paper and then look for shapes or designs to bring out with marker. This was a lot of fun.
For some reason I saw birds and cats. I hate drawing cats, only because I don’t think I’m very good at it, so I did the two birds first. In the first blob I saw an eagle with a fish in his mouth and the second one was a random mythical bird with an angry look. Then I tackled the cat drawings. One is of a cat sleeping and the other is a cat from the back side.
…..day 25
In Carla Sonheim’s year-long on-line class the prompt today was to take 11 photos of the same object. My granddaughter and I decided to should use Lucy, their basset hound, as my subject. This is a slight departure from the drawings and paintings that I do but I do consider photography an art form as well.
…..spent most of the day on the road and in Collingwood
My husband had a meeting with clients in Collingwood today so I decided to accompany him on the trip. While he was with his clients I spent time walking up and down the Main Street of Collingwood, taking photographs and checking out some of the stores. After awhile I stepped into a lovely little coffee shop and treated myself to a flat white. I had to ask what it was and it sounded interesting so I ordered it. Delicious!
I brought my sketch book with me and some markers. It was the perfect place to practise my one-liners. Carla Sonheim wanted us to make several one-liners of birds, cats, potted plants or flowers, shoes and houses. For those of you unfamiliar with one-liners, you literally draw an object without taking the pen off the paper until you’ve finished the drawing. It should be loose and free flowing. They’re fun to do but sometimes a bit frustrating. My favourite are the flowers and houses. Here are a few pages that I worked on in the cafe.
…..day 23
In Carla Sonheim’s on-line class today the prompt was ‘I’m a circle’. She provided a link that showed the origins of the yellow smiley face. If you’re interested go here.
I decided to continue practising painting free hand with watercolour and of course I chose the circle. I purposely overlapped the circles to see how the watercolours would react and then I drew in the smiley faces in-between the circles.
…..Days 20 and 21
In Carla Sonheim’s on-line class we were instructed to create a still life using a scraping technique using an old credit card. Any left over paint on the card could be scraped off onto another piece of paper that could be used in future projects.
I loved this process. My brush pens didn’t give me the desired effect that Carla was looking for so I used the credit card to make all my marks. Jill Kuhn also used bubble wrap to stamp on some colour and I really liked that so I tried that as well. The flowers go off the page in this piece so the vase and the pear are the focal points of this still life. I know that I’m going to experiment with this technique some more. It’s very addictive. I even really like the art paper I created from the left over paint.
…..I’m truly caught up
Today I spent time developing a piece of art around the theme “Target Animals”, except that I opted not to make an animal. Instead I made a completely abstract piece. You might see an animal or some kind of character in my design but that was not intentional. This assignment is part of Carla Sonheim’s year-long on-line art class.
I used marker and acrylic paint on 185 lb. acrylic paper by Canson. It is 9 x 12 inches in size. The background is actually a lot whiter. I really need to take photos of my art in natural daylight.
….on day 17 I finally attempted the exercise that Carla Sonheim assigned last week
When I saw this assignment, called Target: Animals I was immediately reminded of Norval Morrisseau, an indigenous painter from Canada. When I was teaching I introduced this wonderful painter’s work to my students and we painted our own favourite animals in a similar style which we called X-ray paintings.
The assignment involves producing circles and painting target rings inside each with different colours of acrylic paint. This is where the patience comes in because each colour has to dry before you start the next. I was fine at the beginning but as the circles got smaller and I finished sooner I barely waited long enough before I added the next colour. I think it’s somewhat evident in some of my circles.
Where do I go from here? I’ve been debating with myself as to whether I follow the assignment exactly as taught or if I put my own spin on it. I think I will do the latter because the animals that I’ve seen produced look too much like Morrisseau’s work. They’re lovely but I need to try and be more original.
….day 8 of my year-long challenge
With this piece I tried to direct the thread to create a landscape. Tricky! I used acrylic inks again for the threading and watercolour to fill in the spaces. When you work on yupo paper you have little control over how the paint dries but then that’s one of the reasons why I like to work with it. This piece is also 9″ x 12″.
….I’m a day behind because my new computer was uploading 23 000 photos from the cloud
I’ve continued with the theme ‘threading lightly’ from Carla Sonheim’s year-long class. For this abstract piece I used yupo paper and inks for threading. I love the acrylic inks because they are so vibrant. I filled the spaces with watercolour. The piece is 9″x 12″.
Mama Cormier 