Play Day

My hubby had to go to town today so I thought that it was the perfect opportunity for some "play".  It has been awhile since I have brought out the paints and my mark making tools.

I watched the Doodles Unleashed workshop on the web a few days ago and today I got busy.  I didn't do a "follow along" with the video so my page is not turning out like the instructors - Traci Bautista at Strathmore Artist Papers.

http://www.strathmoreartiststudio.com/

It was fun and I used some acrylic inks with some mini misting bottle, water colour paints, acrylic paints and fluid acrylic paints, oil sticks and oil pastels.  In the beginning of the process, I used stuff from around the house to lay on the 140 lb watercolour paper (it is what I already had on hand, same with the paints and inks) to start misting the ink around on the page.  I'm glad that I had most of the materials already.  Since I didn't have enough mist bottles or fluid watercolours I used the acrylic inks that I had and just added water to the misting bottle.

 Now that I take a look at it again, I think I should have attached the key to the key fob.  What do you think?  Does it really matter since this is only stage one in the process?  In some ways, I like the picture just the way it is; I like its minimalist simplicity. 

Then I added more colour. I'm not done yet because now that I look the snaps I took, I can see that I need more "light" to contrast all of the dark.  This is much more defined in the purple, pink and blue doodle page

My red, green and blue page has some light yellow but again it is way too dark and I need to add acrylic ink to it as well as part of my doodling process. 

It has been a fun day!! I am looking forward to the next time that I have a few hours to spare so that I can complete these.  I did a couple more pages too; for something to do while the wet paint was drying (I should have gotten my hair dryer out I suppose).  Those pages are not even as far along in the process as these above so I have not taken any snaps of them.

All in all, I had a lot of fun on a very dreary, rainy, foggy day!  If I must spend a lot of time indoors then I am happy that I could spend my time making art.

I look forward to seeing how these will morph once again as I spend some quality time with them and apply the final marks on them!!

Home Alone

I have the house to myself for the next week!  I can watch all the television I want and pick my channel.  I can eat what I want, when I want.  I can do exactly what I want to do and when I want to do it.  Wow!  The choice!

So I have been busy trying to paint a picture that I took.  I have made some design changes that I think suit a painting although it will deviate from the original picture that I took last March.  It is actually a sunrise photograph and I love sunrises and sunsets.  I am having some difficulties because I don't really know my brush strokes well enough.  I don't know how to make the water resemble water.  I have done what I can and it looks kinda sorta like water but I'm not always the best judge.

Here are some pictures that I painted in class this week.  They are colour studies, one blue and one burnt sienna.

I ran the study in blue through my iPhone 100 Camera's program and it came out looking like an antique and in many ways greatly enhanced the original picture.

The burnt sienna picture did not fair well through the same program and looks a bit over exposed.  These are just studies so I should not be too hard on myself.

I'm not sure that I like water soluble oil paint as these were still wet and they were painted last Wednesday.  Okay so I know that oil painters (read fine art oil painters) love that very fact.  Me...not so much!   The more that I look at this photograph the more I think that I might have to revert this image to it's original.

I was busy try to reclaim a laminated board and frame as my next project (I firmly believe in recycling - regardless if it is art or not) so I only had a minute to sketch this 2" x 2" thumbnail.  I saw it on the web and I think it is a photograph taken in Scotland.   It is a quick sketch and I can see now that I have not clearly expressed the river bank from the river.