Explorations In My Journals

I have been trying to make art every day this week. That can mean working on paintings or in my art journals. Yes I do have more than one. Sometimes I am called to a particular size or style to work in. I have been leaning to bigger and bigger journals. I still like to work in small ones though. Some of my journals were bought for classes I am taking, so I only work in them for the class. That is until the course is over with, but I like to continue using it with the concepts learned.  In today's post I show a few of my different journals and pages.






















This is an imaginary landscape. I used Inktense Blocks and colored pencils in the piece. I started with blocks of color which looked like a landscape scene so that is the route I took.  Colored pencils were used to highlight the river and grasses. I like the soft quality that resulted.

This Albino bird was the result of playing with colors. Napthol Red, Hansa yellow light, Titanium White and Quinacridone red.  This was an exercise where you paint for 2 minutes and cover half of it up and then repeat 4 times.  From Flora Bowley's bootcamp. It was fun to do. One I think I will explore again and again. Its a great exercise if you fear the blank page or are just feeling stuck.

In my sketchbook skool journal some crows came for a visit. Pencil, watercolor, a dip pen and acrylic ink were used. There is a new session of Sketchbook Skool starting next week. There are three different classes to choose from. I am doing Storytelling this time and I can't wait for it to begin.

I've been playing along with Connie Hozvicka's Art Journal Wisdom free e-course this week. This is my first page. I also incorporated Flora Bowley's idea of using strong contrast. It really made the image of the woman pop off the page. You can join in on Connies class here. This journal is one I made myself.  It has Fabriano paper in it and if you've ever worked with this paper you know what a dream it is to work with.

In what way are you expressing your creativity this week?

Kate

Lots Of Work In Progress

I am headed out of town tomorrow so there will be a little blogging break happening here. I started working on some new paintings or I should say continued with them. They are both works in progress as I have nothing else to show you today.

I started to work on the painting of red trees. I had a few minutes before I needed to go to the dentist this morning so I laid in the trees. At least it is a beginning.

This canvas has been the one where I put excess paint from my pallette.  I have been adding to it for months. Today I decided to work on it some more. I made several big mistakes and it ended up quite muddy.  So now I'll let it all dry before I tackle it again.  I should have know better to mix warm and cool colors without letting one of them dry. The next time you see this I am sure it will be totally different.

Here is that lily pad painting I was working on. It needed some more work so I tackled that today.

I think it looks a little better but to make it more like the photo I would have to change so much. Really didn't feel like spending that much more time on it. I hate when you think its just a little change you need to make, when it turns into a major redo. To do it properly I would be better off to start over.

See you back here on Monday,

Kate

Monet Was A Genius

Each time I try painting Lily pads it become more and more apparent what a genius Monet was. These suckers are hard to paint, even simple ones like I have been trying to do.

I started with this lovely photo of some lily pads.

I moved it to photoshop and changed the color.

This is my painting of it, still a work in progress. I need to find a way to make the top lilypad flatter. Plus add more highlights. Its a constant learning process for me. The only way to get better is to keep practicing.

Using Liquitex Ink's

This exercise we were supposed to have an experience in nature, sketch it and then draw again adding oil pastel and then paint it. Well the weather had been rainy last week and I wasn't inspired by anything locally so I used a picture of red trees that I took in Oregon a couple of years ago.

   

This is the initial drawing of the trees, just a simple sketch in charcoal on watercolor paper.

This is my painting with the oil pastel added. I should have made the trees in different sizes, I'll try to do that when I get to the acrylic painting. I loved using all these fiery colors.

This morning I woke at 5 a.m. dreaming about liquitex inks.  I bought a set of these a couple years ago and haven't used them much. Really forgot why I bought them.  So I went searching on Youtube and found this video.  They are really going to fun to use.

More From My Landscape Class

My original picture of Mt. Moran in Teton National Park.

First attempt had lots of issues.  Sky too small, mountain in the center of the painting.

Re worked the whole piece by moving everything down, now the mountain is moved over a little bit to the right.  A better composition now. I like this version better. I could fuss with it a bit more but I am ready to move on.

I started with this photo. I stood inside a willow tree as I took the photo.

I used a stabilo pencil and  a Lyra water soluble graphite pencil. Then I added gel medium to blend the pencil. Oil pastel, gave the color. I am using Mungyo oil pastels. They are an inexpensive artist quality brand of oil pastel. I blend them with olive oil and a baby wipe. They are quite fun but messy too.

Easter Sky - My Version

On 12 X 12 canvas a simple imaginary landscape from my Expressive Landscapes course.   I am still reworking the one I posted early.  I am finding this kind of painting hard to do.

I finished my Tardis socks a couple weeks ago.  They turned out pretty good.

I spent Saturday on the phone with Sarah and Kyle.  She got really sick while they were camping. Told her to go to the emergency room. Turned out to be appendicitis. She had surgery at 9:00 that night. The appendix had not ruptured but the surgeon said if it had been a couple hours it would have ruptured.  It was really inflamed. She is home now recovering.  It sure was hard being so far away and not being able to be there in person.

I did the ice bucket challenge to support ALS awareness and research for a cure. Here is the video I posted on Facebook.

I really encourage all my readers to donate to ALS, it is such an awful disease. Donations can be made at http://alsa.org

Expressive Landscapes

For paint party friday I thought I would talk about an online course I have been taking. I've been enrolled in Pauline Agnew's course, See Paint Feel - Expressive Landscapes for the past 2 weeks. Its the third course I have taken from Pauline and its really been great. She is such a great teacher, I always learn amazing things from her.

One of our first exercises was to make collages for the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. This is my collage for air.

This is earth.

This is fire.

This is water. These were really fun to make.

This was an exercise with mark making while listening to bird songs.

Here we used Oil Pastels to mimic a water lily painting. This is something that takes a lot of practice. I'll need to do a half dozen of these before I feel confidant at it.

Next we did our first landscape.  This is still a work in progress. I needs quite a bit more work but I'll add it to this post anyways.

This is what is called a network drawing. The original photo was a scene looking from underneath a flowering bush.  I am learning lots of new techniques in the course and of course new ways of looking and seeing.

You can heck out what others are doing on Paint Party Friday here.

Further Explorations with Paint

I've been taking an online class with Misty Mawn called Painted Layers. Its a pretty awesome class so far. I thought I would show the work I have done so far. These are the first two backgrounds I did.












I liked how this turned out.













I never liked this one no matter how often I worked on it. I think it was the colors I started with. They are just an odd red and blue to use together I guess.













This is one using a silhouette. I used a stencil for the butterfly and swallow. I like the bird but I think a smaller butterfly would work better. I had taken a swallow stencil I had and cut it smaller so I could use it on different sized pages. I like this tiny one.












Here is my first landscape. I like how the sky turned out. I kept trying to put a house at the base of the mountains but it never looked right and after painting over it the third time I gave up. Overall for a first one I like it very much.

I've been really putting art on the back burner while I work on my Nanowrimo novel but I am find if i don't get to do some art I really get cranky and the writing gets harder. Today I decide I would do art until noon and then write and I think that is working well. I just can't give up this art stuff no matter what.