Two tree paintings

I love trees; they are so varied and beautiful.  Late last year Carla Sonheim offered Diane Culhane's online class, "For the Love of a Tree".  I signed up immediately :-)

One of Diane's assignments was to create two small 5" x 5" paintings focusing on value. 

The first painting began with a warm base color to which was added its complementary color:

Blue-violet overlaying Yellow-orange

After much layering of opaque and transparent colors, the finished painting:

The second painting began with a cool color which was overlaid by its complementary color:

Vat orange overlaid with cobalt blue.

Final painting:

I enjoy the spontaneity of this approach.  I have to suspend judgment and to go along with what happens, respond to the previous mark or color, allow for accidents - very liberating :-)

Smudgies

As I've mentioned, I am taking a year-long class, "Y is for Yellow" from Carla Sonheim. 

In one of the class exercises we had to make a smudge mark with an animal in mind.  Next step, using as few lines as possible, define the animal.  I enjoyed this lesson; it is a challenge to use as few elements as possible to capture a figure or object.

These are my smudgies:

Aardvark

Caracal

Hippo

Wildebeest

Wild Pig

All of them were drawn using pastels and ink.  They are a lot of fun to do :-)

Oddly egg-y

This sketch of flowers is from my art journal:

The Egg Flowers (ink, colored pencil)

The blossoms began as randomly placed yellow marker circles.  Next I surrounded each one with jagged "blossom" heads.  I let them sit that way because I thought, "my, my, they look like eggs, now what?"   I felt a bit unsettled with the visual/linguistic combination of egg and flowers.  O, I should explain, I am a little queasy around eggs that are out of the shell - I just am :-)

I came back in a few and added the leaves, stems, and ground.  This is what I love about daily art journaling - it's very easy to take a chance, explore, and experiment.  I find the greatest value in executing the daily practice.  I wrote more about it in this blog post (Carla Sonheim's art journal layout, Cat Bennett's class, Making Art a Practice).

From my art journal, I dreamt of flowers...and "Y is for Yellow"

A freshly brewed cup of coffee, my large art journal and some selected pens - what a great way to start the day :-)

Creating a journal page every day is a wonderful and productive ritual, too.   From the Draw section today:

Ink, gel pens, Copic markers

I'm also at the start of another year-long class ("Y is for Yellow", creatively taught by Carla Sonheim) ready to complete the assignment for lesson 1.  I was thinking and doodling and this name stack appeared:

Ink and gel pens

I had to choose five animals for the lesson and these are mine.

The Inconstant Journaler

Yes, I was an inconstant art journaler; days or even weeks might pass without a new entry in my officially designated art journal.  However, an idea from Year of the Spark plus a recent online class have changed my ways :-)

The first influence I attribute to an art journal page layout that Carla Sonheim shared in a Year of the Spark lesson.  The page looks like this:

Draw it new every day.

Creating the boxes and printing a set group of words is a nice ritual to get my hand moving.  I like the categories for the boxes – I find them to be very useful.  Also, the sketchbook is a plain wire bound one (so it isn’t precious in any way) and it is a larger format – a Strathmore 400 Series 9” X 12”.

The second influence is from an online class I recently completed – “Making Art a Practice” – which was taught by Cat Bennett.  Cat emphasized enjoying the creative process and doing it daily.  She generally sticks to simple tools and media e.g. a few brushes, colored pencil, opaque watercolor, and NeoColor II.  Cat’s approach is relaxing and playful :-)

These are some randomly chosen pages from my art journal – specifically of the Draw and Misc boxes:

Remy in ink.

Colored pencil, ink.

Pitt brush pens, ink

Sharpie pens, ink, Pigma Micron pen, randomly created “stamps”

The content is pretty much what I see around me or doodle or imagine - probably why my red coffee mug appears so often :-)  The "10 Ideas" box is great for capturing thoughts or projects which come to mind first thing in the morning.  I like capturing all of it in one place.