Escaping With Paint

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Mama Cormier

….after producing art pieces for my solo show at the end of June it was nice to just paint for fun

I’m currently taking a free course with Louise Fletcher called Find Your Joy. For the first assignment we had to tape off a large sheet of watercolour paper and choose three colours of paint plus black and white. I divided the paper into nine rectangles and then randomly started to add colour to the paper making sure to ignore the tape and go over it as if it were part of the painting.

The process is very intuitive, which suits me to a tee. After 30 minutes of mixing my colours and randomly laying down the paint and some black ink I stopped and carefully removed the tape. I was very happy with the results. Some of these pieces may end up in my show or not but the point was to have fun and escape from the realities of everyday life.

Thanks to Weekly Prompts for hosting this challenge: https://weeklyprompts.com/2022/05/21/weekly-prompts-weekend-challenge-escape/

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From This to That

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Mama Cormier

…yesterday I showed you two blobs of colour that I would transform

Today I completed a cat that looks like it was crossed with a mouse and a leaf eating dragon. Here’s what I started with…..

….and this is what I ended up with

365 Days of Art – Playing with Lines and Tools

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….Days 169 and 170

I’m taking a new course through Carla Sonheim called Translating Landscapes. Our instructor is Anita Lehmann and her first lesson is all about mark making, experimenting with different tools and mediums (ink, pastels, charcoal, pencil) and responding to music. She encourages us to be messy, free and loose. It’s a lot of fun.

Here are my studies of lines using a variety of tools and inks and charcoals.

When I turned on the music I also used pressed pastels and walnut ink along with the black ink, charcoal and pencil.

365 Days of Art – Yellow

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Mama Cormier

….day 90

A few days ago Carla Sonheim posted a prompt. It was a quote from the artist Pierre Bonnard. I have to admit that I had never heard of him before but he managed to make a living from his art in the early 1900s right up to the 1940s while living in France.

The quote was “One cannot have too much yellow”.

I decided to take a page of one-liner drawings and add some colour with paint and collage. I painted the background with yellow watercolours and then I cut up paper to add texture and visual interest to the flowers. After that I took markers and conte pencils and added more lines and squiggly detail.

365 Days of Art – Ramblin Rosie

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Mama Cormier

…..day 49

I was inspired to do another collage character today. My granddaughter seemed to really like my first one so I decided to try my hand at another one. This time a dog came forward when I started to lay out my random pieces of paper. Then I decided that the dog could be running so I made the ears fly back and the leash would also be sans owner and flying in the wind as well. Here is the process that I went through before committing to my final picture.

For my final draft I added a tongue and some line detail around the eyes.

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Dali and Doodles

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….I finally sat down to draw some Dali portraits

I was hoping that taking my time would produce some pretty good likenesses of Salvador Dali. I worked from two different photographs and my finished sketches don’t even look like the same person. The second piece looks more like an Asian man.

The second part of this project is to add some doodles to the background. This is suppose to be done while watching TV or talking on the phone.

While listening to the radio I added colour to these two sketches. It was very relaxing and I really liked the process.

Starry Nights in Oil Pastel and Watercolour

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Mama Cormier

….children in grades one, two and three create their own version of Van Gogh’s Starry, Starry Night

Once again I was inspired by Carla Sonheim’s Free Kids Online Art Classes. In week two Diane Culhane introduced the kids to a crayon resist night sky.

The children loved how the watercolour brought up the crayon designs, especially the white marks. They also loved sprinkling salt over their creations. The concept of cutting out a black silhouette of a city or country skyline was a bit more challenging, especially for the grade ones. Here’s a collection of paintings created by my grade two class.

Finger Painting Brings Out the Child in Me

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Mama Cormier

…thanks to Carla’s recent on-line mini class in finger painting

Using only your hands to paint is very liberating. I loved the simplicity of it and the feel of the paint on my fingers. I’m hoping to do more and I haven’t even tackled the third assignment that let’s you get really messy.

The first assignment was to create a palette of colours using your fingers to mix the paint and apply them to the paper. The second part was to paint a vase of flowers but I decided to use two of my photographs that I recently posted and try to recreate them with this finger painting technique. Jill Kuhn actually gave me the idea after she commented on the first photo, suggesting that I paint it with watercolours. Instead, I used acrylics and my fingers. What do you think?

Year of the Spark

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Mama Cormier

….another great on-line art class with Carla Sonnheim and Lynn Whipple

In December I signed up for a year long on-line art class with two great artists, Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple. The class is called Year of the Spark and twice a month each teacher presents a lesson and several fun assignments. So far the assignments have been designed to get our hands moving and look at art and drawing in new ways.

Carla’s first class had us drawing dozens of one line sketches of animals, flowers, and houses and then choosing one favourite and drawing it again using many different types of drawing tools. We had to choose one finished piece in the end and frame it. Here are some of my one liners and my framed piece.

As much as I liked my dog drawings I decided to elaborate on my birds.

As you can see these drawings are intended to be fun and whimsical.

This week Lynn introduced us to pattern drawing and creating cards using people from old photos and a multitude of shapes of cut up papers. I’ve played with the pattern portion of the assignment but I haven’t yet started the card assignment.

The pattern assignment is a warm-up activity but I’m so addicted to this random doodling that it’s taking me hours to finish one page. Tomorrow I’m going to have to try to work faster and maybe use only watercolours to create my patterns. Keep it simple.

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Table Top Painting and Drawing Part 2

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Mama Cormier

….I finished my on-line course this week

I really enjoyed this on-line class with Diane Culhane. I don’t always finish all the assignments but for some reason this class held my interest and the assignments didn’t inhibit me. Carla Sonheim really has a knack for finding amazing art instructors for her on-line classes.

The last three days of this six-day class involved painting on gessoed paper, a textured wood panel and glazed canvas and making glazes with acrylic paint. All the compositions consisted of table top still life arrangements that we had to create. Here are my creations in the order that I finished.