Inspiration Deck

Jessica, from In Search of Dessert, dreamed up this great project.  She was deeply moved by the book "Desire to Inspire" by Christine Mason Miller (which I also happened to be reading when I came across Jessica's great idea)

The back of this book features some perforated inspiration cards featuring art and quotes from the contributing artists in the book.  Jess thought it would be cool if a bunch of people from all over the world created their own deck using a set of standard playing cards, mailed it to her, and then she would assemble a new deck for each participant using a different card from everyone involved.

Here's a shot of the cards I made:

Jessica emailed me last night to say she'd receive them and wondered how I'd made them.  I only took one shot of them in process, but here's a quick description.

First, I ironed them to a sheet of freezer paper so that they'd stay in place while I painted the background.  I started with a few coats of gesso to completely cover the face of the card.  Then, using a brayer, I rolled on two shades of orange paint, haphazardly.

While it was still wet I flung on some darker orange paint and then rolled over it with the brayer to smoosh the orange drops.  After it was all dry, I flung some aqua and white paint to make all those little drips and dots seen below:

Once totally dried I decorated them with collage papers, stamps, colored pencils, more paint, etc, and wrote a different quote on each card.

I had to gesso the backs one at a time because I was afraid to iron the painted cards to more freezer paper.  I then laid them face down and used spray ink to color the backs in a bluish aqua color and I stuck a mailing label with my contact info on the back of each one.  

aren't those labels cool?  I scanned some of my painted pages and printed the image onto blank white labels, and then ran the labels through again to put my contact info on top (using the regular label template through Word)

Jessica will hole punch each card and bind the new decks with a metal ring before mailing us each our very own one-of-a-kind inspiration deck.  I can't wait to see what I get back!

Caught up

I finished lesson 3 of my composition class and I'm officially caught up (until lesson 4 is posted Wednesday).  This assignment used similar techniques to the horizon assignment from lesson 2 but explored the cruciform shape and focused on texture.

Cameron left a comment on my last post that my pieces looked like something you'd find in a high-end hotel or spa.  which is really just the sweetest thing ever, but also kind of cracked me up because I'm always surreptitiously taking pictures of art prints like these that I see hanging in public places  (most recently a hospital) because I want to paint like that.  But it's such a popular abstract look that you can find cheezy reproductions in target for crying out loud.  so maybe it's not something to aspire to....

in the meantime, the class is really interesting and helpful and is challenging me in a big way.  I painted over and threw away a bunch of these before settling on a few I can live with.  and even though I'm saying I'm "caught up", I feel like I've only scratched the surface with these exercises.  I want endless hours to repeat them over and over again.  I have way more interests than hours in the day.

Composition lesson 2

Lesson 2 in my Jane Davies composition class was about abstract landscapes.  I added contrasting paper "horizons" onto those color studies I showed you in my last post.  Playing with color value and contrast and balance.

 

 

 

 

Then I worked on these pieces:

 

The thing about taking a class is that I don't want to create something exactly like the example used in the lesson.  But I don't really know how to do it any other way, which is why I'm taking the class in the first place.  And one of the reason's I took Jane's class is because I find her work so beautiful and inspiring and I look at it and say "I wish I could paint like that".  But if I painted like that then I'd be painting like Jane Davies.  and she's got that pretty well covered on her own.

I'm trying not to over think it (too late for that you might say) and just learn all I can.  I could go on and on about what I do and don't like about these paintings, but I'll refrain.  They are class projects and evidence of learning and that's plenty good enough for today.

I'm getting paid to do this

My wish came true and we got our snow day today. The phone rings at 5:30 and I answer to the beautiful sound of the Superintendent's robo-call, telling us schools are closed for inclement weather.  What this means for me?  A paid day off to do nothing but make art.

I'm catching up on my composition class.  Here's my second shape collage for lesson one:

I've read the handout and watched the video for lesson two and I've prepared 5 backgrounds and started all these little color studies:

On a day like today even snow-blowing is relatively pleasant, because at least I'm getting paid for it.

composition class

So I'm taking Jane Davies' class "Keys to Dynamic Composition" and lesson 3 was just posted today and I've only just begun to explore lessson 1.

sigh.

and I've been avoiding the class blog because I didn't want to be influenced by other people's work, but I finally popped over there today and holy crap there's some great stuff going on.  great art, great conversation, great feedback and instruction.  

what the hell have I been doing?

sometimes the social aspect of online classes is just too much for me, but I think I've been missing out this time.

So there's my first attempt at lesson 1, which had us focusing on repeated shapes and creating both variety and unity in our composition.

It's finally snowing here in Massachusetts after the mildest winter in a billion years. (that's the official meteorological statistic, by the way).

I'm really really hoping for a snow day tomorrow so I can dig into this class.

The local kids say that if you wear your pajamas inside out when you go to bed, schools will be cancelled in the morning.

Guess what I'm doing tonight.

marbled paper

You probably know by now that I am completely obsessed with painting papers.

This will be the third (and final) installment in my "painted love" series and I saved my favorite for last.

I've tried a number of different techniques for marbling paper, but this one is my favorite.  It's cheap, easy and (relatively) not messy.

I start by pouring about an inch of liquid starch into an old 9"x12" pan.

(The only place I can find my liquid starch is Walmart - in the laundry aisle. It's dirt cheap and comes in a big bottle)

I mix cheap acrylic craft paints with water to make it drippy. How much water? It depends -this is a trial and error kind of thing because every paint has a different consistency.  The goal is to get the paint to float on top of the liquid starch.  If it's too thick it won't come off your brush in the first place, and if it comes off your brush but immediately sinks to the bottom of the pan it means you need more water.  Here are two colors floating on top:

I gently stir them with a chopstick:

I move the chopstick up and down until it looks like this:

I drag my handmade comb lightly across the surface to feather the paint.

(the comb is made from toothpicks sandwiched between 2 pieces of cardboard.  I think I learned it from Martha but can't find a link)

Now the surface of the water looks like this:

I lay a piece of card stock on top of the water and gently press it down to make sure the whole surface of the paper touches the paint:

I quickly peel it up. (this picture was from a different experiment, hence the orange paint)

Then I dunk it in a bucket of water.  You can also run it under the faucet, but I don't have a sink in my studio and I hate working in the kitchen.  This bucket works just fine.  I swish the paper around to get all the gloppy starch off the surface.  The paint stays on the paper.

Here's the finished piece:

If you're continuing with the same color palette, you can reuse the starch for many many pieces of paper. You can drag scrap paper or a paper towel over the surface to pick up any paint you didn't catch on your print, or you can leave it there and just add more paint for your next print.  Eventually you'll find your prints aren't as crisp or the colors are muddying - rinse out your pan and start over!  The big bottle of starch will get you through several sessions.

As much as I like the traditional feathered look, I absolutely adore the abstract "blobby" look, like this one:

Same technique, only this time leave the paint floating on the surface without stirring or feathering.  you might want to gently tip the pan or blow on the surface just to get the paint to spread, but leave it loose.

You can see a whole bunch more of my papers in this old post.

And here are some recent projects using my papers.

I used this one as a background for a poppy painting:

I used this one more traditionally - as endpapers in an altered book.

and check out the book - it has little DRAWERS in it.  I learned this trick from Amy in her awesome (free) altered book class on Flutterbye.

I've also been using them to decorate Altoid tins:

Big fun.

Try it.

Kitty gestures

I've been long intrigued/intimidated by Carla Sonheim's book "Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists"

It claims to be "52 creative exercises to make drawing fun" and I eagerly checked it out of the library expecting to be transformed into a confident whimsical illustrator overnight.  But I browsed it and immediately said "I can't do this" and returned it without trying even one of the exercises.

Enter Cameron, from Paint Myself Pretty.  She has decided to tackle one exercise a week and blog about it, and has begged encouraged other bloggers to do the same.  And since I like Cam, and I want to be able to draw better, I've decided to play along.  I ordered the book and it finally arrived and I'm catching up on lessons 1-3.

Lab 1 - "Cats in Bed"
The idea was to draw lots and lots of cats from your imagination, while drawing on a soft surface (such as bed) to keep your lines loose.  Here are my bed kitties.  I tried and tried to make a different shaped cat (without going to google and looking at other people's cat drawings).  My brain seems to know ONE way to draw a cat (and not a very good one at that).

Lab 2: blind contour giraffes

Okay, so it's not a giraffe.  It's another cat.  And in fact I skipped this exercise in the interest of catching up with assignments, and pulled out a blind contour drawing I made of Jake 6 months ago.  I'll go back and do some giraffes.   I swear.

Lab 3:  Pet gesture drawings.  The mission was to make a series of quick loose gesture drawings of your pet in action.  It was challenging because one cat would't stop moving and the other sat like a lump.  But I kept at it throughout the day and captured quite a few poses.  I even like a few of them:

 Phyllis, (who has been quiet for such a long time now) has threatened to rear her ugly head over these sketches.  I have to keep reminding myself that I will not wake up one day magically knowing how to draw.  I actually have to draw and draw and draw some more if I want to learn.  I'm hoping that Cam's good example will keep me working on these exercises all year.