Gallery display and Drawings

I have been continuing to do some drawing while I am at Art Club; not every week but often and I thought I would share.

Sea Serpent - pen with watercolour

This is one I really enjoyed doing and so I decided to paint it. Painting was a bit of a challenge as the drawing is just on sketching paper. I am still using the Medieval Fantasy book but I think I will be trying some new subjects next time. Here are a few more from that era - lol.

quick sketches

I took a fair number of photos when my friend and I went to the Artrageous display in Kimberley. It is a juried show with cash awards given to the winners. I can't say I was impressed by the judges choices but I rarely am - they have very strange criteria.

this piece was a runner up and done by a Creston Potter

the second painting from the right won 1st place

On another note; Blogger is having trouble with their notification emails so I have to check my blog a few times a day to see if any of you have left a comment. They are apparently working on the problem so until then don't be surprised if you don't get a reply quickly. I am going to leave myself a comment and check the notification box (if there is one) - maybe that will work. - It didn't work - sigh.

Thanks for stopping by - I love to hear from you!

Going Overboard - Again!

I think it must be a sickness. I get what I think is a really good idea and I go overboard and make lots of - whatever!

quilled house plant ornaments

I have had a request for some of these from the woman in charge of the gift shop at the Creston Museum so maybe I haven't made too many - lol. I have enjoyed making these except for the bumble bees. For some reason they seemed to be harder to make than any of the other designs.

As the weather improves, my thoughts are turning more to my garden and bedding plants than to art. I plan to slow down a bit and get back to basics so I am just going to focus on drawing for a while.

I picked up a fun book at a artist's book sale; Draw Medieval Fantasies by Damon J Reinagle. I think they should have added the word Cartoons but the drawings are fun and way outside my norm. I will work on these mostly when I go to the Art Club's painting days.

And finally, I have decided what to do with this painting.

NOTHING!!!

I had a number of people respond to my call for help. The majority of the comments were to leave the painting alone because  - they liked it! A few artist friends made some very good suggestions and I tried them out on some mylar laid over the original. I also turned the painting sideways and studied it for a while. Nothing seemed to work and the more I looked at the piece the more I liked it as is. Now I have to come up with a title - sigh!

Thanks to all of you who helped with my decision - I really appreciate your comments and hope you will keep it up!

Definitely Crazy!

That's me, definitely crazy. As if I don't have enough to do with my Watercolour Painting Parties, my garden and flowers, and visitors to my home gallery - I just had to go and decide to do the 'Every Day in May' drawing/painting challenge.

May 1 to 4

Granted the paintings aren't large but they still take time. I took my smallest sketch book and divided the pages in four which limits the size and forces me to work small and quickly. The list for the challenge includes a number of things I would never consider painting so it is a double challenge. Have a look and see - maybe you will try it too.

This weekend I will be attending a 2 1/2 day watercolour workshop and I am looking forward to it. But, I still want to get a few more things made for the table I will be setting up for the Bird Festival. The quilled hummingbirds have been popular in the past  and so have my cards that feature hummingbirds so I hope to make a few of each.

This is one of the quilled ornaments I make using 1/4" paper strips and it is the 100th ornament I have made. As I hope to do a few Quilling Parties this year, I was pleased that I was able to time myself while doing this piece today. It took just over an hour to complete so my estimate that novices will be able to do two simple quilled projects in 3 1/2 hours sounds about right (I hope). It also means I will be able to get a number of quilled birds done by next Friday.

Oops! just remembered that I have to go close up the greenhouse. Thanks for stopping by!

Looking for the Cute!

I am a member of two Google+ communities that are all about Anime - https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/118263779281217652988 and https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/102365177651453517231. I don't read the stories or follow the characters but I really enjoy seeing the art.

One of my goals this winter is to try to learn to draw this fascinating genre. Like every other creative endeavour it takes skill and practice. As drawing people is way outside my normal subject area, it is going to take a lot of work!

Using a "how-to" guide from one of the above communities, I have been trying my hand at some Anime heads. However,  I CAN'T FIND THE CUTE! So many of the Anime characters are cute - I think it is the eyes - but I know my drawings fall way short.

My first attempts

I admit that I haven't spent much time yet on this challenge but I will keep at it over the next few months and I will keep you up-dated too!

Always Learning

Whether I am taking workshops or teaching beginners I feel that I am always learning. Sometimes the lesson is something old revisited, sometimes something new that I am not sure what to do with, but always useful even if you have to wait for inspiration.


A project that I always get my students to try is drawing an upside-down picture - something they can't recognize so they can only try to reproduce what they see with no preconceptions.

 

 Try something like this yourself if you have never done it before - or even if you have! I got this idea from a class I took many years ago when I lived in Edmonton.

Something else I use with my students is Alphabet Art. I developed this when students were having trouble with basic shapes - the old 'I can't draw a circle' excuse.

Although the letters are adjusted they are recognizable. Try this exercise too and see what you can come up with. More pictures done this way can be found on my Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mellowood-Studio-and-Art-Gallery/120412094734638?ref=hl

Today I picked up the painted papers I did at a workshop with local artist Win Dinn (see last entry for contact info). These papers will be used in some of my mixed media art but I plan to keep some until next spring when I take 'Painted Paper 102'.

Wonderful colors which are making my mind spin and my imagination soar. These papers are made with mulberry paper and as they needed to dry before I could bring them home I thought I would try some different papers at home. Rice paper - it looked and felt like the mulberry (or so I thought), Artist's tissue paper - flimsy, it will probably rip, Parchment paper - hmm -let's see. Well, the first two worked reasonably well, the third not at all. BUT, I learned something didn't I?

Mostly Blue

 Here is the mixed media piece I did using the painted rice paper, some cheese cloth I used to mop up left over paint and a 'skin' I made last year. Color and fun - What more could one ask for?