Back in Blue

Hello Blog. Remember me? I used to post here about my art. Then a funny thing happened. I started doing even more art and didn't take the time to blog. But now I'm back, at least for the moment. I'm still doing art, but the pace has slowed a bit as I'm in the midst of my academic year as a teacher and have less time for fun.

I'm taking Carla Sonheim's 2016 year long class, Y is for Yellow to help me stay inspired and motivated. Each lesson has a different theme beginning with a letter of the alphabet. For 'B' we painted in the style of Picasso's Blue Period using layers of watercolor and gel medium.  I haven't done much of this type of study and found it to be a wonderful exercise.

"Contemplative Woman in Blue" after Picasso

My version of Picasso's Mother and Child 1901

And my favorite painting from my blue period is this original portrait I did of my great great grandmother.

It feels good to back. I hope to post more soon. 

Growing Stronger - Work in Progress

Another year has started, and I feel that I am getting closer to figuring out what I really want to do in my art. Over the past two years, I've been like a sponge, absorbing and learning all I can about mixed media and collage, as well as striving for a more abstract style in my work. I'm more confident about drawing again and finding ways to integrate drawing into my mixed media pieces. Drawing brings my process to the forefront, exposing all of the messy twists and turns of the process, giving an  expressive quality and depth that I like. The imperfections are interesting visually to me. I love creating a sense of mystery in my work, leaving at least part of the meaning up to the imagination of the viewer. I've been working on my painting, too, and find that sooner or later, I come back to watercolor. I'm using watercolor over gesso in this piece, along with collage.

For all of the reasons, I feel I am growing stronger as an artist, and that feels really good!

Face #20: Resist

Have you tried using a resist yet? Ayala asked this in a post on Facebook today, which reminded me that I hadn't tried using a resist. So thanks to Ayala for suggesting this. I love using crayon resists with watercolor. It's like magic when you paint over the crayon and the lines appear. I did use a reference for this face, which I am finding very helpful, even if I am not striving for realism or an exact likeness. As I worked on this face, I added shading and details with pencil and marker. The leaf shapes were an unexpected bonus in her hair that I couldn't, um, resist.  

Identity Crisis

We all know adults who who still don't know who they want to be when they grow up. In fact, I find myself in that category from time to time.  When it comes to my art, I seem to be the artist who doesn't know what she wants to do, or conversely, I'm an artist who wants to do it all! At some point, though, it's time to focus more, to settle down and choose my own style. Or is it? I've been painting a lot lately, which is great. But a quick look at what I've worked on over this past week shows that I am clearly all over the place with my art!!

This is a page from an altered board book I started last spring while taking Carla Sonheim's "Flower Crazy Class." The technique involves using collage, gesso, watercolor and pencil. I love doing flowers, watercolor, drawing and feel like I could just keep doing these crazy flowers for the rest of my life and never get bored! 

Then I decided to try out the same technique, but with a different subject, resulting in this whimsical piece.

I really love integrating collage with my drawing and painting skills, but I also still love doing 'pure' collage. Before I knew, it, I'd done this little collage.

And then, to further complicate things, I've been working on this abstract acrylic painting! 

So, as you can see, I really am not very focused in what I'm doing. Following my whims is certainly fun, but is it wise? Is it important to settle on one style?

Thanks so much for stopping by! Your comments are always appreciated.

Where the Wild Flowers Are

Where the Wild Flowers Are
mixed media on 8" x 8" panel

I can't seem to stop painting these crazy flowers. My family and I watched "Where the Wild Things Are" recently and I loved the monsters in the movie. I've always loved Maurice Sendak's illustrations in his beloved children's book. Somehow, my strange flowers here in muted colors remind me a little of those monsters, which is totally weird, I know. But these are not the dainty flowers that beckon you to smell them and cut them for flower arrangements. No, these flowers are different - a little scary, maybe, as if they were from a slightly scary flower nightmare, with a happy ending, of course. Or maybe they're on their way to an audition for "Where the Wild Flowers Are" not coming any time soon to a theater near you!

Trio
mixed media on 4" x 6" panel

I don't really know where these flowers are coming from, but they sure are fun to paint! For both of these paintings, I began by adding some collage before gesso and then continuing with watercolor and pencil. I love seeing glimpses of the collage underneath. As I've mentioned in other posts, I learned this technique from Carla Sonheim. It's helped me figure out a way to combine my new love of collage with my old love of drawing, and watercolor. I may have to stop doing these flowers at some point, but I'm sure I'll be exploring this technique for a long time. 

Flower Craziness

Hello, my long neglected blog and lovely blog readers!  I seem to have taken an unplanned break from blogging but the good news is that I've been doing a lot of painting. I signed up for Carla Sonheim's Flower Crazy Class and have been going flower crazy (in a good way) all through the month of March. It's my first online class and I am loving it. Carla is such a wonderful teacher. Beginners and experienced artists alike can learn a lot from her playful and practical approaches to creating art. 

One of the great ideas I've learned from the class is to look at other objects for inspiration. for example, in this exercise, I looked at pictures of gears online for flower shape ideas. Pretty cool, huh?!

And in this painting, I was inspired by a sea anemone.

It's amazing how this takes the pressure off when you're drawing, at least for me. 

Can you guess what my inspiration was for this one? 

I'm amazed by how many completed paintings I've done this month. It's definitely been a worthwhile experience to take this class. 

The Power of Doodling: Imaginary Flora and the Brain

I've been doodling this week, or, to be a bit more precise, my whole life. Yes, I'm a doodler from way back. In first grade, my teacher asked my parents to send in a special notepad I could use to doodle on in school. She could have scolded me, or tried to make me stop, but instead, she accepted that it was something I needed to do and found a way to make it possible. From that point on, my doodling passion flourished throughout my entire academic career, and I'm proud to say, it's still alive and well!  Even so, I sometimes I feel like I need to do something more 'serious' with my art than 'just doodle' and I don't always give in to the fun. But this week I gave in to the doodling and doodled on a grand scale! 

First in my sketchbook:

Then on my Ipad!

And finally, I got my encaustics and played around with a doodle design in wax:

Doodling is not only fun, it's good for your brain! Studies have shown that it can help you concentrate, and improve your problem solving ability. This Ted Talk by Sunni Brown outlines some of the benefits of doodling. I think any of us who doodle know this instinctively. It's just a part of who we are, and as natural (and necessary) to us as breathing. So if you're doodler, keep on doodling. And if you don't doodle, why not join in the fun and give it a try?

Ipad Watercolors On the Road

Here are a few 'watercolors' I did recently on the ipad using the 'Paper by 53 app." As it turns out, painting on the ipad with this app is really fun, and has nice results. I did some of these sketches while in the car. This is a great way to do sketching on the go!

You can read more about my adventure with ipad sketching in this earlier post and see more of my digital sketching if you are interested. Happy New Year to my Paint Party Friday visitors! Thanks so much for stopping by.

Resistance is Futile: Ipad 'Painting'

Since I spend so much time on the computer for work, and other aspects of daily life, I have been resisting any form of digital artwork. It's not that I don't admire it, it's just that I do art in part because I need to do something with my hands that takes me far away from the fast-paced digital world. Yet somehow, over the recent holiday break, I found myself experimenting with drawing and painting on the ipad. I bought myself a stylus, and upgraded my copy of the app Paper by 53 so that I would have the watercolor painting tools. After that, I proceeded to enjoy myself thoroughly, playing around  with drawing and painting on the screen.

It's a great way to squeeze in sketching practice while on vacation. If you don't like your sketch, you just hit delete and start again! This certainly won't replace my other artistic pursuits, but I am happy to have found a way to use my Ipad to work on my art skills. 

Cherry Blossoms on Cardboard 'Canvas'

What's not to love about turning recycling into art? Yesterday, while participating in Paint Party Friday, and visiting Jean Zoss' lovely blog Bluebirds Living in the Meadow, I learned about Alma Stoller's tutorial on how to make a cardboard canvas. I'd been stockpiling chipboard for several months, with no particular plan, so I had everything I needed to get started right away.

The cherry blossoms are gorgeous looking out my window right now, even in the pouring rain and I love the words from John Koethe's beautiful poem, "The Late Wisconsin Spring".

Watercolor Floral

One of the things I'm trying to be more consistent with is practicing my drawing. I recently joined The Sketchbook Challenge. I love all of the different online challenges and find they can really be motivating. It's always so interesting to see what other artists are doing. The February theme was closeup, and my goal here was to practice a closeup sketch. I did a lot of drawing first and then did color washes. Normally I would just jump right into painting, but I'm quite happy with the result here.

Wishing You Were Here

Since I've been experimenting with mixed media, I've made a few trips to local thrift and antique stores. One of the stores I visit is well stocked with antique postcards, so I bought some, not sure exactly how I'd be using them. My first experiment using watercolor on one of them didn't work so well, even with a very light touch on the water. Then, I discovered clear gesso and decided to give that a try. Here is my effort painting over the clear gesso. I still used a fairly light touch with the water and paint, but it worked much better. I'm not completely happy with the sand dollar yet -- they're easy to draw, but harder to paint. I want to get the shading right, so you may see an updated version soon.

Happy Paint Party Friday to my PPF friends. Here is the link in case you're interesting in joining this friendly challenge: Paint Party Friday

Spacious Skies: Old Works

Today as some are enjoying a quiet, relaxing day after Christmas, my industrious husband is cleaning out our garage. A box of my old art work has been sitting out there, neglected and falling prey to dust, mildew, and spiders (the main reason I have put off taking care of it). But today turned out to be the day to open the box, and realize that everything inside is still in pretty good shape. And I found some long forgotten work I'd done that looks pretty good! Here are three watercolors I found today. I see that my love of big horizons is on display in these sketches, something that comes from growing up on the prairie.

These muted scenes are a nice reminder of my ongoing love affair with watercolor and lonely, muted landscapes.

Paint Past the Photo

Here's a wonderful exercise I learned from Dory Kanter in her beautiful book Art Escapes. It's called paint past the photo. Basically, you put a picture down in the middle of the page and paint past the edges. It's a wonderful way to practice color mixing and working on your ability to use a realistic style.

Here is one I did using a photo I took at Joshua Tree National Park. It was approaching sunset when I was there, and the colors and shapes of the rocks were amazing.

And this one I love, because the small person walking on the trail is my husband.

Thank you to Dory Kanter for this great idea!!

Beyond Self Interest: Small Mixed Media Collage

Another busy week! But I did squeeze in some time to work on some small mixed media collages. This one is collage and watercolor. I'm quite new to collage and love integrating text, patterns & textures with paint. It appeals to my love of a process-oriented approach as well, letting the composition unfold and surprise me along the way. The title jumped out at me from the text -- creating a gentle reminder.

Here's a link to another small collage I did this week, in case you're interested.

p.s. Thanks for visiting PPF friends! I hope there is enough painting here to qualify. :)

Seaside Rocks

I've spent a lot of time at the beach this year and I always enjoy looking at the rocks. There are so many different colors, and depending on the lighting, different colors will stand out on different days. This weekend, I did some watercolor sketches of a few pretty rocks I found for my journal.

A Sunny Day, A Sunny Collage

I started this collage with paper I'd prepared by rubbing a texture with crayon to create a resist. My first washes were in acrylic to prevent blending with subsequent layers. After that, I stuck to watercolor and gouache. What better poet to celebrate a beautiful day than Longfellow!

Scenes from the Coast

This summer, my family and I have been spending a lot of time at the beach. Here are a few sketches from the beach that I'm going to put into a small booklet. This will be the cover page. We always find a lot of sand dollars on the beach.

I sat on the beach and did this little watercolor. While I was working, the pelicans came and were swooping down to catch fish. It was a fantastic sight to see! In fact, I was afraid to try drawing the birds in, but then I did it, and realized a quick gesture was all I needed to do.

I'm always drawn to the interesting, organic shapes of the seaweed that washes up on shore.

A favorite activity of ours, especially with visitors, is to climb the local lighthouse.

It was fun to practice my watercolor and drawing this way! I need to do this more often.

Illustration Friday: Imperfect

I gave up perfectionism long ago, so imperfect is practically a motto for me. Almost anything I do would fit this theme! Last week, I spent some time at the beach with my family and found this battered piece of seaweed as I walked along the shore and decided to do a quick watercolor study. It seems like a great example of beauty in the imperfect.