Index Card Art Part 3

Hello Friends!

Here's my midweek ICAD catch up.  I think these constitute my least exciting or inspiring group of cards.  There are two or three half way decent, but I hit a dry patch on inspiration.  It happens.

This one was made for the Summer Solstice with swooping swallow in a blue summer sky with a hint of ripening corn.

ink background with ink lifted using a surgical spirit soaked cotton pad

I used the aforementioned pad to make a 3d moon

A similar removal process enhanced with doodling.  Very underwater feeling!

Doodling and bubble wrap printing

ink removed using surgical spirit on a cotton bud, doodling

I call this one Bubbles in Chains

Mixed media

Drawing 3d bubbles

    

I hope you'll say if you have a favourite one!

Until next time

Stay safe, Stay well

Debbie xo

Thinking Out Loud

Hello Friends!

We've had days of sea fog, also known regionally as a haar, har, hare, harl, sea fret, and many other things depending where you live.   I just call it grey and cold!  It's finally lifted, so hopefully we'll see some better days ahead.  I'd love my oriental poppies to get a chance.

So, my friends, I haven't asked in a while, but how are you doing now?   Have you been vaccinated yet?  Are you still wearing a mask?  How does getting back to whatever state of normal we're in make you feel?  What makes you concerned, and what doesn't over how we are moving forward?

I found I was starting to settle a bit as we eased out of lockdown, but now, suddenly, our peninsula is heaving with tourists.  Everywhere you turn, it's chock a block, full to bursting with strangers.  Worse, they think it's business as usual, no social distancing or awareness, very few wearing masks.  Yesterday I overheard a couple standing on the pavement outside a shop say they weren't going into shops as masks were required to be worn.  They even questioned it might be the law!  Hello! It is the law.

Numbers are on the rise again and they're talking of halting the easing of the current lockdown.   When will this cycle end?

On the plus side, I've had my second vaccine, so now it's three weeks and counting down to hopefully the best protection this will give.  However, I am not instilled with the confidence of many, and I am not alone in remaining wary of others.  Even once vaccinated we're being told to continue to observe Hands, Face, Space with anyone outside our bubble.

For a long time I have said I can't draw.  Words are powerful tools, so I've now changed my mindset.  I now say, "I can draw, just not very well . . . yet."  This is why my ICAD submissions this year are all drawn, either with pencil, brush, or marker, freehand. Practice!  No hiding place for mistakes.  It's quite a challenge.

In recent years I often found myself spending hours every day on each card.  I then began to question this.  Hours of work on a cheap, disposable piece of low quality card just didn't make sense.  That level of work and effort deserved better.  So, I am setting a time limit of no more than 30 minutes actual working time per card {I do allow extra time for paint to dry}.

Then I got to thinking about mutability as part of art practice.  Without going too deep on this, think about Antony Gormley's "Another Place" on Crosby Sands, which is subject to corrosion and change through an endless circle of the tide and the elements.  If you ever get a chance to see it, it is spectacular.  Change is part of art, and sometimes those changes happen to major, globally important art works; even the act of putting those first marks down is change, so it's time to stop being precious over the quality of the paper.  It's part of the deal.

It's a challenge working on an index card, it's such cheap, inferior, paper on which nothing reacts how you expect it to, and certainly nothing like you get on proper artist quality paper, whether it's water colour paper, pastel paper, Yupo, or anything else.  Index cards are so absorbent it's easy to rub a hole in it, and you can't blend, or move your mediums around easily. Alcohol inks just seep in and stay put. Not much fun in that, they're designed to be blended.  And, no two packs of index cards are the same.  It is, though, a good way to do some mark making, and if it doesn't work out, well, it's only a penny or two lost on the card, not £££'s on a sheet of water colour card stock.  Swings and roundabouts; roundabouts and swings.

By sticking to "dry" mediums, I am also keeping my cards flat.  The minute you put anything wet on an index card {glue, gesso, acrylic} in any quantity, your card just buckles and rolls up, and that makes it more difficult to work the curved surface.  In previous years I've used a lot of gesso or acrylic to give me a non absorbent surface and spent ages flattening my cards out.

In light of this, I may fulfil a promise I made to rework some of my favourites on proper watercolour paper or card.  I already want to rework several that I've done to date, not just from this year!  However, in keeping with the ICAD ethos, this won't happen until after this year's challenge is over.

So far, I've worked from my own, original photographs, but for this next one I drew from an actual stem picked from the garden.

6/61 Quaking Grass 

7/61

A Bunnies' Ears cactus.  

This one wasn't easy as I used water colour paint {Inktense} and index cards are cheap and tend to dissolve easily.

8/61

A couple of cactus pals in Inktense with Posca and fine liner

9/61

Monstera, or Swiss Cheese Plant

Although I don't own one of these now, I have had several in the past and with trying to find 61 different things growing in my cottage garden and house plants, everything helps!  Graphitint paints

10/61

Even the weeds get drawn! Mind, this convolvulus, or Morning Glory, also called Bindweed, can be spectacular with it's pristine, white flowers.

I drew this using the negative space technique with alcohol pens and Posca.

11/61

Feeling rather tired, possibly after my vaccination, so just used a Brusho ground with a line drawing for a stylised Arum Lily

12/61 

Daisies, inspired by my lawn, of course.  Inktense wash, Posca pens

As I type this, it's just about 8:00 a.m. and already it's 22C in my living room.  The sun hasn't even come around the cottage yet, the doors and windows are open, curtains closed, and it's going to be scorchio, I think!

Until next time

Stay safe, stay well

What's Flowering in the Garden and ICAD Roundup

Hello Friends

Spring and meteorological Summer are still teasing us, with good weather, then back to bad, so we plod on.  There's not much we can do about it, except complain or get on with it, or both.

Here's a few blooms that survived that nasty, salt laden, burning wind a week or so ago.

Oriental Poppy Royal Wedding

Forget me Nots

Cranesbill Geranium

Oriental Poppy Coral Sea

Alchemilla Mollis with Evening Primrose leaf photo bomb

Not sure! If anyone knows, please say!  I also have a blue flowering one, not yet open.

Edit: An extensive Google search reveals it is a Dwarf Yellow Iris Sisyrinchium.  I also have a pale blue one.

Rosa Rugosa

Arum Lilies {looking better from a distance, as something is nibbling away the edges}

The last bit of No Mow May around the rabbit family

It's so heartening to see so much colour as things survived those battering winds and rain.   Nature truly is miraculous.  Thankfully, many buds were still tightly closed so the delicate poppies and roses remained protected.

ICAD 2021

If you aren't interested in ICAD, then look away now, but I do hope you'll stay and see my work.

As some of you may remember, most summers now I take part in the annual Daisy Yellow Art event ICAD.  You can find out more here. 

I'm not following the 61 daily prompts, I'm just going to do my own thing.  With a break from previous years, I am going to keep my cards more simple than in the past, in an effort to try and focus on my drawing.  I have set myself some ground rules, which are:

1.  No using stamps or stencils, I must draw everything myself

2.  No use of gesso

3.  No collage or gluing things

4.  Set a 30 minute time limit per card so as not to spend all day on it {easily done}

The first two are drawn freehand using Spectrum Noir colouring pencils.  

1/61 Lavender spikes

2/61  Osteospermum

3/61  Stylised Allium 

For this one I drew a loose pencil circle for guidance {later erased}, then did mark making using Marvy Le Plume ink pens.

4/61  Stylised Sunflower

I inked the background to a flat colour with a broad tip alcohol pen, and then coloured in everything with more alcohol pens.  

5/61  Forget me Nots {in remembrance of my mother who had Alzheimer's} 

Freehand using a variety of marking pens, and graphite pencil detailing

I do so enjoy puttering, and even though I'm not good at it, it brings me so much joy and pleasure in our stormy world.

Until next time

Stay Safe, Stay Well

Closing Out ICAD 2016

Hello Friends!

Well, it is August 1st and ICAD is now officially over, so here are the remainder of my cards for July. Lots of different subjects and techniques, all lots of fun.

Here is what I wrote on the {closed} ICAD Facebook page this morning ~~~

Feeling kinda odd today ~ who isn't? ~ even though I still have five catch ups to do by mid month it isn't quite the same this morning somehow. Still, this year has reignited my spark and now I can't wait to get started on watercolour paper {it's been in the cottage for about six weeks waiting in the wings ~ how good am I?}

ICAD saved me this summer, truly it did, and I am so happy and grateful for the chance to reconnect with old friends and make some new ones along the way. It makes the experience so rewarding.

Heartfelt Thanks to Tammy and her Wonderful Team of moderators who make ICAD possible.
Enormous Gratitude to everyone for the inspiration, the comments and likes, the camaraderie, and just for making ICAD a unique experience for all of us to escape to for two whole months of Summer ~~~ without you it just wouldn't happen!

As before, I'll put the daily prompts in the caption, and please remember that, although I painted, drew, and collaged these myself, some of the images are not my own original art but used as they fit the daily prompt. So, here are my favourites from July, with a montage of all the cards at the end ~~~

A bonus card and background card

100 so I did a rendition of AA Milne's Hundred Aker Wood

Zodiac

Magic

Statue of Liberty ~ I reiterate, as I have done constantly on FB and other social media platforms, this is NOT a political statement but the Statue of Liberty as a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who.

Sunflower 

Meditation ~ I guess eating a pomegranate is sort of meditative or annoying!

Folk Art

Bonus card beachscape

Surfboard

Lens ~ using my own photography cut in circles ~ as seen through a lens

Yellow

Rainbow Making Machine

Play on Words
A Woolly Jumper

Lighthouse ~ this is the Smalls Lighthouse 21 miles off the coast

Monochromatic

Aurora Borealis

Superhero ~ if the competitors taking part in Invictus Games are not Superheroes, then I don't know who is

Paisley

Cloud ~ oh, look, yet another Doctor Who reference!

Fortune

Aquarium ~ a dendritic print from which a Weedy Sea Dragon emerges

The Olympics 

Textile

Graffiti ~ oh! look, another Doctor Who obscurity! 

Hopscotch or Tic Tac Toe {Noughts and Crosses}

Sorbet ~ a sorbet sunset over the lamp-lit village

Path ~ as a personal homage to Beatrix Potter during the week we celebrated the anniversary of her 150th birthday, I copied one of her little watercolour paintings.

July 2016

June 2016

So, it is over and it feels strange to wake up and not have half an hour before my day starts looking at all the wonderful miniature pieces done by all the members of the group as I drink my coffee, but my creative spark has reignited and I am eager to start making small compositions using watercolour paints and other mediums as soon as I can. There are several in this collection that I want to work on a slightly larger scale and on good quality watercolour paper.

Which is your favourite? I'd love to know!

If you want to see my entry for June's ICAD you can read it here.

Until next time~~~
~~~Deborah