From the sketchbook

Before I put away the carving tools, a few more rubber stamps:

Doodle-inspired line up

These critters - and the coffee mug - were inspired by some of my sketchbook doodles. 

More abstraction

from Karine Swenson's "Elements" class.  The assignment was to select four to five color chips, mix the colors and then use them - with black and white - in an abstract painting.

I chose a tetradic color scheme and here are the mixed colors on my palette:

Here is the resulting painting:

I love the individual colors and in pairs they are quite lovely; however, as a group, using them was a bit of a challenge :-)

Doodles... seriously :-)

A while ago I took Diane Culhane's online class, "Doings of A Doodle" which I enjoyed tremendously.

One major benefit of the class is that I now take my doodles more seriously as sources of inspiration.

This dog doodle -

inspired a sketch that I made into this rubber stamp:

Inspired by the hot summer day

It is very hot - since early this morning.  No clouds.  No cooling breeze.  Remy loves the sun but he suffers when the temperature exceeds 78 degrees; perhaps it is because of his super fine, super effective undercoat?  Alas, no walkies during the day. 

We did spend a few seconds (!) out on the back deck earlier this afternoon and I was imagining Remy like this:

But without the beret :-)

"Complementary colors" painting

The next "Elements" lesson was about color schemes and value which also included mixing colors to match favorite paint chips.

I used a complementary color scheme (red-orange and blue-green) plus black and white to create this acrylic painting:

18" x 24"

This is the value study:

Abstract Shape

More "Elements" (Karine Swenson's online class) work - this time the focus is on shape:

Mixed media collage

Paper collage

Paper collage

Using line

The next lesson from Karine Swenson's online class, "Elements", was creating an abstract design using line and linear variety from the previous exercise.

The assignment was to produce a painting using these same elements:

18" x 24" acrylic painting

Into the abstract

I just finished taking an online class - "Elements" - taught by Karine Swenson.  The primary focus of the class was abstraction.

The first lesson had to do with form and mark making.   I used graphite, charcoal, ink, conte and marker:

My favorite :-)