Failure Is An Option

Now that I am overcoming the concern for certain results, my art journal is a playground for mistakes and experiments.

This one is a failure in a good way:

Ink, Copic markers, Sharpie pens

I like the flower head technique but the colors do not work well together.  However, the patterns derived from the technique are nice and I will create other interesting patterns in future work.  Out of my failure comes something positive :-)

This next one is an experiment in smearing:

Oil pastels, Inktense pencil

The flower heads are sort of likable and I believe these colors better are better coordinated.

Swimming against the current, in my world:

Ink, gel pen

Art Journal - Hearts and YOU

I see all sorts of Valentine's Day images while I am out and about.  It obviously engendered the shameless use of multiple hearts in my art journal page yesterday.  See what I mean?

Ink and oil pastels

I am certain that intermittently I will be under the influence of heart-shaped things and mushy-thoughts for the next few weeks :-)

Sketchbook page

Week 3 of Cat Bennett's online class, "Making Art a Practice" focused on daily life.  This morning my mug of freshly brewed coffee was on my desk.  And at my feet, my sweetie Remy was snoozing.

ink and oil pastels

I enjoy opening up my sketchbook and making a quick capture of the moment :-)

Ignoring the inner critic

Carla's current assignment for 2015 Year of the Spark is to create a large painting from a childhood photograph using the approach I would have as a child.  I haven't created any art of this kind since I was an actual child :-)

I made a first attempt at it and called it done.  But in looking at the painting the next morning, I realized I completely missed the goal of the assignment.  Throughout the creation of this first painting I was conscious of the inner critic - thinking about correct proportion, color mixing, value, and so many other things I never considered as a four- or five-year-old.

Thinking back to my childhood, I recalled that I used crayons for most of my drawings.  For my second go at the assignment I chose oil pastels because for me they are an adult version of crayons, but with richer color and a luscious feel.

I worked from a reference photo of me at about three years of age.  It's a murky black and white photograph with many dark areas and some blurry vegetation.  (This is the link for a sketch I made of that photo.)

The child in me would have added color, a lot of color, a critter - most like a dog, and flowers and trees.  Accordingly I did:

Why the brownish hair?  As a young child I didn't like drawing black hair because when I would scribble it using a black crayon I thought it looked very scary.  Therefore I changed my hair color to match the dog.

I guess it's obvious that I had fun making this drawing - I benefited greatly from letting go. 

Mixed Media Br-r-r-d

O my, the weather is changing quickly.  More drizzly, cloudy days and cooler temperatures than I remember from years past.

So yesterday I was in my studio looking out at the trees and watching wedges of geese flying off to wherever they go this time of year and this image came to me:

Am I a braven?  Am I a rudgie?

This is a sort of a budgie-like bird with raven coloring who is of course wearing vermillion ear muffs... why not :-)

Bird in blues

I had one last piece of watercolor paper that had been prepped with acrylic paint.  Not wanting to do another wolf I decided to create an imaginary bird.  I watched a short video on Carla's blog where she demonstrates a "creative starter" technique that is brilliantly simple (here's the link to Carla's post).

I drew my circle and flower on some scrap paper then cut it into quarters; I didn't glue the two pieces to my w/c paper but taped the pieces onto some copy paper:

Hmmm...

With tracing paper over top, I "found" the bird:

He was there all along.

I transferred my drawing onto the prepped paper and masked the bird with painter's tape.  Then I brought out the oil pastels and began applying color.  I also used pastels, colored pencil and graphite.

Bird in blue and I think he's found something:

 

"I spy..."

It was a beautiful spring day and outside my studio all kinds of birds were singing.  I enjoyed working along to their beautiful calls.

Last of the wolves

I recently completed the final illustration for this month's Year of the Fairy Tale.  The main subject is a wolf.  I think I focused on the wolf because it is similar to the dog and I love to draw them.  Hmmm, I guess I didn't stray as far from my comfort zone as I first thought...

So here is the last of the wolves:

Danger, danger.

I used oil pastels and graphite over acrylic paint.  I masked off the different elements and then used lots of layering and smudging - messy, messy but Fun :-)

Another scary one...

a wolf, that is, and a menacing one he is.  It's the second illustration I did for this month's Year of the Fairy Tale assignment:

Danger, danger.

Creating these scary images is mostly unexplored territory; I welcome the stretch.

Fairy Tale Wolf

Continuing the Year of the Fairy Tale assignment and more exploring oil pastels and acrylic paint -  this time a scary wolf.  And I wouldn't want to meet this snarling guy at my door:

Grrr...

From Wolf to Woof!

The mixed media assignment I just completed (for  Carla Sonheim's 2014: Year of the Fairy Tale) has a wolf as one of the characters.  Well, I began with a wolf but as I created the illustrations using the techniques Carla demonstrated, my wolf morphed into another critter.  Let me show you.

First technique:

Pretty wolf-like, I think.

Next technique:

O, I see a change.

Final technique:

Um... a dog.

The first illustration is oil pastel on watercolor paper and the next two are acrylic and oil pastel also on watercolor paper.  I haven't used oil pastels much at all so this was an opportunity to haul them out of the cabinet and explore.

When I laid out all three pieces to assess the results my reaction was, "wow, these are really primitive" and then to my surprise, "there is something about them that appeals to me."

I am not putting away the oil pastels quite yet because I want to find out what the appeal is... :-)