365 Days of Art – Preparing Backgrounds

…day 78

In Carla Sonheim’s on-line year-long art class we were assigned to create some backgrounds (Part 1) for the next class. These canvases were to be created with collaged paper but instead of gluing them down we were suppose to use tape in a variety of colours and patterns to hold everything together. In other words the tape is part of the design.

Last night or early this morning I started making two canvases. I was totally engrossed in the process and by 2:30 in the morning I had completed two backgrounds. Here they are:

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Step two is to paint something (an object, animal, person) in white paint somewhere on these canvases. Haven’t quite decided what to do but I have a couple of ideas. Stay tuned.

365 Days of Art – Enhancing My One-liners

…..day 75

Back in January, Carla Sonheim gave us an assignment to create multiple one-liners of birds, cats, flowers, houses or anything that tickled our fancy. I started them in a brand new sketch book and I’ve done some things since that I’m quite proud of. The one-liners, however, didn’t thrill me. On the first page I had drawn five different birds and every time I open the book that is the first thing I see. Today I decided to enhance or edit those birds. I should have taken a photo of the whole page before I made the changes but I didn’t. Going back through my photographs I did find one of the birds from a similar page. Here it is:

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I’m much happier with my new rendition.

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Art With a Toddler – Day 74

….365 Days of Art

Today I travelled to Hamilton to spend a few hours with my granddaughter and her mom and dad. I packed up a box of circles from my collection, some stamps, Washi tape, a glue stick and clear ‘cow’ tape. I also brought along a small book with blank sheets inside so that Winnie could have her own sketch book.

We sat together at the kitchen island and I opened my sketch book and we worked side by side so that I could demonstrate how to make a simple collage using bits of paper and tape. She need a bit of help with cutting the tape and using the letter stamps was a bit of a challenge but she got right into it and she added some detail to my example as well.

Here is my piece:

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Here is my two year old granddaughter’s art work:

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I’m Calling it Finished – Day 72

…..365 Days of Art

I’m glad I waited before I declared my abstract piece finished. I added more grey to to top of the painting and I added more colour throughout. I was thinking of adding a third layer of highlight markers but instead I took my Micron pen and added more line and dot detail. I’m now happy to say that it’s complete.

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Knowing When to Stop – Day 71

……365 Days of Art continues

This morning Jill Kuhn from Jill’s Art Journal posted a work in progress that inspired me to use some more of my circles using a similar technique. Jill didn’t use collage and most of the colour came from the use of watercolours. I started by making lines and circles with my Micron pen around circles that I randomly glued to my paper. Then I used my Staedtler and Faber Castell markers to add colour.

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I continued to add more colour to the larger spaces. I didn’t want to fill in every space and many of the spaces are quite large so my next step was to take a 6B Staedtler pencil and add more circles over the whole  page. Here’s what I have for now. I’m debating whether to add another layer or leave it as is. In art there is a fine line between knowing when to stop and when to continue.fullsizeoutput_6e08

Now that I see it from a new perspective I might add more dark grey to the upper portion. What do you think?

Circles of Flowers – Day 69

….moving right along with my 365 Days of Art

Well after cutting out all those circles earlier in the week, it turns out that I didn’t need them for Carla’s assignment on Friday. So I took some of them and layered them on top of each other and then randomly glued some of them into my sketch book. Then the fun began as I added marks and colour to create imaginary flowers.

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365 Days of Art – A Secret Message

…..day 64 and week 13 of the collage challenge

In week 13 Randel Plowman challenges us to create a collage with words and letters from magazines and newspapers to create a hidden message. Since I used entire words it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out my message.

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Have you figured it out?

My Last March Square – March 31st

…..thanks to Becky B for hosting this fun challenge

I’m combining my collage challenge (week 10) and 365 Days of Art (Day 62) with my last March square. This collage technique is called décollage and it involves layering paper and then tearing away the top layer to reveal what’s underneath.

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365 Days of Art – Squares and Rectangles

….day 53 and week 9 of the collage challenge

I’m starting to get back into my art making groove. This is the squares and rectangles assignment from Randel Plowman’s book The Collage Workbook. Evelyn over at Evelyn Flint’s blog has challenged us to follow the weekly assignments as laid out in Plowman’s book.

My entry is titled Basquiat Meets the Ballet.

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