Needle and Thread

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Mama Cormier

…the name of my new series of paintings for my solo show

The Joy of Making is the name of my solo show in May. I not only wanted to highlight my love of painting and making art but I also wanted to pay tribute to my family’s talents and the things that my Mom taught me when I was younger. From a very young age my Mom taught me how to make doll clothes with hand stitching and later how to use a sewing machine. She also taught me how to mend socks and sew on buttons.

As I got older I taught Family Studies and taught 11 to 13 year olds how to cook and sew. They learned how to embroider, quilt and sew clothes. I continued to learn and practise other needle crafts such as knitting, cross stitch, weaving, basketmaking and more. In my 50s I learned how to use watercolour and later I ventured into abstract painting using acrylics and collage.

Here are the first three pieces of my Needle and Thread series.

5-BA3-C2-BB-17-FD-4-D19-98-E8-B0183-D5-BD5-F4 — *Mending a Broken Heart*

307-F668-F-EFDB-46-AA-8912-3045837-E23-DD — *Those ‘Darn’ Holes*

EEC513-F3-863-D-4-A50-BB43-67-F9720-CB034-1-201-a — *Mom’s Button Box*

A Sneak Preview of What I’m Working On

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Mama Cormier

….the first two weeks of May I’m doing another solo art show

I have been procrastinating….nothing new there but I am starting to feel the pressure of putting together enough pieces for a new show. Once I get going it’s hard to stop me. Here is what my art table looks like right now.

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The Simplist Things Challenge – Day 5 and Beyond

Posted on February 26, 2023 by Mama Cormier

…thanks to Amy Maricle for getting my hands moving again

I continue to fill up my little handmade art journal with slow drawing mark making. Sometimes I start with splotches of watercolour or I glue down some interesting pieces of collage or previous squares of slow drawing exercises. I’m enjoying the process and hope to fill in my journal in the next couple of weeks.

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Wishes – My Second Little Book

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Mama Cormier

…here’s my second book made with painted papers

In this book I used the theme ‘wishes’ and I added collage, pencil, washi tape and ink marks and text to add interest.

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Making Books With Ugly Colours

Posted on May 6, 2021 by Mama Cormier

…lesson 8 with Carla Sonheim

Imagine combining colours that you don’t necessarily like and creating a piece of art with it. That was the assignment from Carla in her Year Long Class 2021.

To add another element of interest we were to use old pieces of art that we no longer liked and cut it up into rectangles. On the unpainted side we added four colours that we don’t normally use or just dislike. I’m not much of a purple person so I used dark purple, dark green, bright pink and pale pink. Here’s what the original side looked like and then you’ll see the newly painted side with ‘ugly’ colours. I’m sure some of you won’t consider these colour ugly and I have to admit that they did grow on me.

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Once the paint dried, each rectangle was cut in half and each half with folded in half. Then the pieces were all stacked together to create a small book and I sewed the pages together with book binding thread. This process created two books.

In the first book I added collage, stickers, marks in black and white ink and I wrote words. Here is the first book I created.

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Another Art Day With Winnie

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Mama Cormier

…I guess Winnie likes making art with her Oma over Zoom

Today Winnie wanted to make more collage people. Most of her time was spent cutting out pictures from her Chirp magazine and then gluing about four pieces onto a sheet of paper. While she was doing that I took the precut pieces I had in my bowl collage papers and started on my Mrs. Potato Head creation, with Winnie’s approval of course. I love how she says ‘that’s perfect’ every time I showed her my progress.

We also did some more intuitive art that Winnie directed but I’ve yet to finish that piece. Unfortunately I don’t have Winnie’s art to show you.

This is my art for day 14 of my year long art challenge…..maybe I should make it a month long challenge.

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Art With Winnie – Day 13

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Mama Cormier

…today was a busy art day with my granddaughter

Since we are not able to get together one on one, I organized at Zoom Art Class with our granddaughter in Hamilton. Once she finished her on-line class with her kindergarten teacher she signed in with me and we had a wonder hour and a half making art together.

I suggested some things that we could work on together and showed her samples of my work. I wasn’t really surprised when she rejected my ideas because she’s five after all. Instead she wanted me to follow her lead and go with her directions. We started with a clean sheet of paper (mine was a bit too small) and she started telling me how to draw the lines on my paper and she did the same on hers. After numerous steps it was time to colour our masterpieces. I carefully filled in the spaces and she boldly added her colours in large free strokes. The whole time we talked and periodically checked out how our work was progressing. Here is the first of three projects we completed.

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.For our next project I was instructed to draw a straight line with small lines coming out of the long line. We were making a tree. Then for some reason she seemed to like the idea of making people the way I had suggested earlier with collage, marker and stickers. Here is what we came up with.

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I love the tower of hair on her girl.

For our last project Winnie decided to show me how to make a paper doll. For some reason she ended up gluing her doll onto a piece of paper and drew tall grass surrounding her. I loved the story she came up with as to why the doll was in the tall grass and how no one could find her but she had super speedy powers so that a lawnmower wouldn’t be able to mow her down.

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My Art Challenge – Days 11 and 12

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Mama Cormier

….finished way too late last night to post my finished piece

Yesterday I was inspired by Lisa Congdon after watching one of her art videos. I really enjoy making line drawings of flowers and Lisa takes it a few steps further by adding lots of mark details and another thing that I love, collage. Adding all the marks is very time consuming but also very meditative and I think that’s why I lost track of time when I made this piece.

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The second photo is the piece that I just finished today. After not being very happy with my last ‘family portrait’ for Carla Sonheim’s class I decided I would try another. I’ve discovered that if I take my time and let things dry before moving on I get a much better result. Also this time I really enjoyed the assignment where as with the first attempt I wasn’t having much fun.

Day 5 – Sunny Day

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Mama Cormier

….it was actually very grey today but a sunny day for my art

Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers and I really enjoyed sketching it yesterday. Today I decided to draw another one but add some collage and colour. I started with the pieces of text collage and then I sketched the flower over it. I added the colour with Tombow markers and at the end I glued down the hummingbird that I had in my collage paper pile.

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I had a very productive evening and also painted another floral abstract on watercolour paper but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow in case I don’t get to my art table.

Starting With a Doodle

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Mama Cormier

….day 2 of Sketchbook Revival

Today in Karen Abend’s Sketchbook Revival class we were introduced to Mary Beth Shaw who is a journal artist. She took us from a doodle sketch done in pencil to an abstract spread using collage, ink and acrylic paint. It was a fun process and a great way to start a painting when you have no idea what you want to paint. Here is my day’s artistic endeavour.