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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Lesson 3

This week's lesson in the Jane Davies class was about shape.

It's hard not to create Jane-like work after watching her demos, particularly because I love her style so much.
Here are some stacked shapes like Jane's, done mostly with the gelli plate.

and then because they look like stones, and I love stones, I went off on a stone-printing tangent and almost got stuck there for the weekend.




I could experiment with this process for the rest of my life.

Plus, they remind me of the Leo Lionni book "Frederick" and what's not to love about that?

 But I grudgingly tore myself away from this so I could focus on the class assignment.
It's tempting to just show you the pieces I like 





and pretend the dozen weird and ugly pieces don't exist

(I really don't know what happened here)


But it's all part of the process, and kind of the point of the class.  Make a ton of work, and make it on cheap paper so it doesn't feel precious.  Try things, leave them unfinished, take them too far, make some more.

Here are some I don't love, but don't totally hate:

(except that big green shape reminds me of an Android)
 


 
And here are some that more or less please me:




As always, just as I start to hit my stride it's time for a new lesson.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

100 drawings on cheap paper

I am so excited to be taking the on-line Jane Davies class, "100 drawings on cheap paper."  The first time she ran it, it sold out before I could register.  When she announced she was running it again, I jumped.  That was almost ten months ago and the waiting has been killing me.  Class finally started September 9th.  I'm two lessons in, and loving it.  It was worth the wait.

So far we've been working on line and layering, and using different techniques to vary the opacity of the paint.  Adding, lifting, obscuring, veiling in all kinds of ways.  I did more than 20 pieces over the weekend and I would just keep going in this manner but lesson 3 goes live tomorrow and I'll soon be caught up in that.

Here are some of the highlights of the weekend.  Some feel finished, others don't - all were a joy to create.  (all created on inexpensive 9x12 drawing paper.)










Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Rainy day sillies

Today's rainy vacation day was a good excuse to work on some pages in my collaborative round-robin art journal.

I started this book in July 2014 and it passed through the talented hands of Mandy, Gina, Lynn and Carroll before coming back to me.  We all had such fun with this project we decided to send the same books around the circle one more time.  (You can see the start of my book here.)

Here's what I accomplished this morning.







Kinda wish it would rain again tomorrow...

Friday, August 7, 2015

vacation art

At first I wasn't going to bring any art supplies.
My notes from last year's vacation said "didn't do much art other than ICAD" and since the 2015 ICAD challenge was over before this year's vacation even started, I thought I'd free up some room in the car by leaving my gear at home.

But then I thought "I could just bring one bag...." and I started to pack.  I'll need some markers, and acrylic paint of course.  And glue sticks and scissors and a brayer.  Some colored pencils might be nice.  And my little pan of water colors.  Don't forget the brushes!  Better get a bigger bag.  A stamp pad and stamps are essential, and I wouldn't want to leave home without my x-acto knife, ruler and cutting mat.  This bag's getting pretty crowded and I haven't even added my sketchbooks or collage ephemera...

Ultimately I managed to squeeze most of my studio into a single bag and we'll just ignore the fact that the bag was the size of a Buick.

Anyway - I also packed a few dozen postcard bases that I had started at home last week.  Day one on the lake I unpacked and got down to business.
Here are the fruits of this particular creative burst.
All approximately 4"x6" on watercolor paper.


















And to think I still have 8 more days of vacation.