Magazine Challenge

I’ve started a new challenge that I thought I would share with you!

I decided that I wanted to work a bit on portraiture so I thought of a way to keep myself interested. I am taking a class on drawing faces, specifically gorgeous girls with Kat Mcbride. Her challenge was to draw 100 faces but I didn’t want to just draw random faces. I wanted to work on creating portraits that look like the people I am drawing. I can draw faces fine but they never quite look like the person…more like their awkward sibling…

So I decided that my challenge will be to draw every face in a magazine…there are a lot of faces in a fashion magazine….just saying.

So I worked through 6 pages last might and plan to fill one page an evening until I have finished all 278 pages in the magazine.

Here is my first page.

I have also been working on some art quilts of kids…the difference with these is that with the magazine challenge I am working on accuracy and speed. These were about accuracy and layering of pencil crayon and coloring.

Lastly I have been working on painting faces using layering. Just a bit of practice and play!

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Traveling Art Journal

I am participating in a traveling art journal project that is making its way across Canada. I thought I would share just a few iPhone shots of the page that I made.

The picture is a little yellowish so I will have to post some pictures later that are more accurate.

Thanks for looking!

A few more slips

Day 2 of my slip class was just as exciting as day 1! On Sunday we applied different layers of coloured slip over top of the textured plates that we made the day before. These ones

So it took a little while to get the layers of colour applied. I would do one colour on a piece then grab another and do an entirely different colour. However by the time I got back to the first piece it wasn’t dry and I wanted to add another layer…so I started blow drying the layers. Normally you wouldn’t want to do that because you can crack your clay but I wasn’t interested in waiting for things to dry. So I ended up with 5 different layers on each plate.

I was really excited about this process since the next step is to take a metal scraper and gently pull the layers off. The more you pull off the more colours that you see.

So I started with one of the smaller plates and pulled off layers and ended up with this.

I like the paisley effect of this one. The colours are very muted because it still needs to be bisque fired and glazed. I won’t be able to show you that for another couple of weeks.

This next one I am not loving that much.

Maybe I will like it better once it is glazed…

This one I love!!

it really reminds me of an animal print. It will be exciting to see it glazed because it has layers of orange, black, sage and white.

This is the last one I made that day and it has 5 different colors and it was so much fun to make.

Yesterday was a Professional Development Day so I spent the day carving and printing a three layered Lino cut. I decided on this bird

It took all morning to cut out the three different tiles. One was background, another was the silhouette of the bird and the third was the details of the bird.

The afternoon was printing, printing, printing! Of course I didn’t take pictures of the steps but here are a few of the finished birds!

So much variety from one afternoon. My partner in crime (Hi Jen!) was working with a really cool jelly fish image but I didnt get much picture taking done.

Last night I was still excited with the possibilities so I pulled out my Tombow markers and a stamp pad and made these.

So much fun! Now I want to carve some more but I might have to do practical thing like laundry and cleaning and marking….Art is more fun…

Slips and Glazes

I have been taking a class about how to make my own glazes. I haven’t posted any examples because really all I have made is clear because I am learning about glaze composition and how to put everything together.

Today, however was a class on using coloured slips. Very exciting and lots of possibilities! Here are the little examples I made.

I have another full day tomorrow and these are what I made to work with.

So I was in class with about 14 other women so here are a few shots of their work.

Tomorrow we are going to be finishing up some of the stuff that we made today and learning how to layer the slips one on top of another. Should be cool!

New Obsession

I’ve been busy again for the last little while but I thought I would show you visually what I have been up to.

Enjoy.

So that’s what I have done since Christmas….dang I’ve been productive!

New, New

The end of 2012 was busy and I was a bit burnt out from work so I really wasn’t working on much art related stuff through December.

However vacation hit and I got busy. Of course none of it is finished but I have been keeping myself busy making stuff!

I started working on some watercolour painting and really enjoyed using my Peerless watercolours.

These photos were taken at noon and I would like you to notice how low the sun is on the horizon. Makes driving interesting when the sun is always at eye level! Oh well since we have passes the longest day of the year we will gain almost a minute of daylight per day. By June the sun will be going done at 10:30 pm and coming up at 3:30am. Probably no surprise that I prefer the extra sun to the extra snow!

I also signed up for too many online classes. Two of them are on Craftsy.com and the one that I started with is called Stupendous Stitches. It is a multilayered art quilt that incorporates machine embroidery, hand stitching and quilting. I have been working my fingered to sore nubs with the hand stitching and I think that I am going to add some seed beads before I do the final quilting steps.

I am just waiting for some supplies that I need for finishing to arrive and when I have it fully completed I will post some pictures.

Last but not least it would not be a vacation if there was not some home improvement project involved! Today we took down a dangerous banister and put up the framing for a wall. Tomorrow we are going to drywall it and mud and tape it. After that we are going to put together the base cabinets we bought and then figure out what size upper cabinets we want to install. It will be nice to have the extra cabinet and counter space!

The new year has been off to a busy and productive start!

Doodle Flowers

Busy and productive weekend but mostly spending money and getting caught up on some worksheets for school. I did manage to sneak in some art journal time that I thought I would share. I had originally planned on experimenting with some clear gesso that I picked up but turns out it needs 24 hours to dry before doing anything with it. Bummer.

So playing with doodle flowers and a Monique Duvall quote it is.

I also played with a new art toy this weekend. I picked up a Gelli plate and played a little. I don’t feel like I created any thing spectacular but it was fun and i will just have to experiment some more.

The first one is my favorite.

I enjoy the fashion legs of this one

And this one is just textured layered fun!

Next time I will properly line them up and worry about registration but I just wasn’t worried about it for these ones. Most of what I will make will end up as backgrounds for my art journal anyway

Thanks for looking!

Final Bit

Today has been about play and work. Luckily enough I get to play for my work do its really not a bad gig!

Three different background techniques planned out today. This one is a paper collage with a silhouette over top. I’ll have one word and one image ready for the students.

The other technique will be called “anything but a brush” where they have to be creative about paint application. Here is my example

Time to be done for the day but I do have two more background techniques to finish tomorrow so I’ll post them then!

Little Bit More

Watercolour peacock with glitter!

A little Bit

Thought I would share just a little bit of art journalling that I have been working on.