LifeBook23 and a Garden Newsflash

Hello Friends! 

I started the Life Book 2023 taster sessions. There are a lot of lessons offered every day, from different artists who are guest lecturers, so it's a case of pick and choose which ones appeal the most. Or in some cases, the ones that I have the time to do.

Some of the lessons appear to be very short in length, however, for a novice artist there's a lot of stop and pause the video to catch up on the piece you are working on. The professional artists can work at speed. I cannot. I would guess that for every hour of video clip I watch, I'm doing at least two or even three hours work.

I chose to do Tamara Laporte's Blessings of a Feather. I decided to quit while I was ahead. I made the mistake of pausing the video to work on an area and I blithely carried on working forgetting to turn the video back on. It just kept getting darker and darker. I reached a point where I thought if I don't stop now, I might just as well rip it up.  My spatters aren't perfect by a long way. They're not as easy as you'd think they are. It's all about getting the paint to the right, consistency, and then having the courage to shake the brush by tapping it against your hand over the painting to get all the lovely spatters. It's also all about knowing when to stop. I'm getting there.

Next I did, in the style of Toni Burt, "Memories". I enjoyed this immensely and took what I learned from the lesson and applied it to one of my favourite arch combinations in the Bishops Palace, St Davids. Drawn from my own original photograph.

Then began the dry spell and nothing grabbed my attention in LifeBook for a few days. All the lessons were way too long for me to think about doing. I was given a big bag of pumpkins the other morning. So inspired by one of them, this is my art for today.  Acrylic "watered down" with gel medium.  I really should have put something in to give it a bit more context. But I was tired. And ready for bed.

Something I'd like to share with you is the importance of lighting in your photography. This is the first first photograph I took of my painted pumpkin.  It's hard to think that the photo above and the photo below are of photographs of the same image.

It was taken in the evening under electric light with a flash. The one above was taken the following morning in daylight with no flash, the difference is incredible. The one taken in natural daylight without the flash is by far the better photograph and represents better represents the pumpkin painting. The second one taken under electric light is flat and the colour is completely different. It is nothing like the original painting. The following photograph closeup shows the shading. There wasn't a lot of shading on it in the original reference photo, and this is reflected in my painting as I tried to remain true to the original photograph.

Reference photo.

This is as far as I can take Andrea Gomoll Wunsche's lesson "In Tune With The Moon" because I don't have a printer and her finished piece includes printed text. At some point I can handwrite everything out and finish it. I found it didn't work out well using acrylic paints but it was a decision made because I have a lot of white acrylic paint, and I'm getting low on watercolour. However, it was drying out far too quickly and didn't blend as good as I would like it to. Still, it's a learning curve.

Song of the Selkie in the style of Lucy Brydon I really got a lot out of this lesson. Painting skin tones in greens and blues was quite a challenge as I've only just started painting portraits a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed this lesson immensely. I've learned quite a lot as well.

At the moment I'm at a grinding halt with LifeBook, which in general is not appealing to me at all. I have enjoyed doing the pieces that I have shared in this blog. It is my intention to pursue those further. I have seen two other guest lecturers work that, again, I would like to pursue but each one will take me a full day of sitting at my art table, and at the moment I just don't have that kind of time to spare. It is a shame they are presented so intensely for a taster session. Speaking to my fellow artists, there are many of us who share this opinion.

I still have lessons by the following artists that I'm hoping to complete. Melanie Rivers. Ida Lang Anderson. Tiare Smith. There are two or three others, but I can't remember their names right now. We also have another the week to run on this taster session, so I'm sure there will be a few more names added to my list.

!!!NEWSFLASH!!!

I am hoping that I have found somebody to come in and help me with the garden. We have a volunteer group here called the Befrienders who help people who need help They might do things like shopping, or they might do telephone befriending, or they might just pop in and have a chat and a cup of tea You put your request forward to them, and if they've got somebody interested or able to help you, they come to your aid.  I asked them if they had anybody who might be able to come in and help me clear and tidy up my garden, because to be honest, since my diagnosis, the garden has run away with me. I am quite ashamed of the state it is in and hope that with the help of these kind people I can get it back in some sort of semblance of order, if nothing more than getting it tidied up to put it to bed for the winter. And productive, of course.

 

Until next time.

Stay safe. Stay well.

Debbie. xo

ICAD part six

Hello friends

You may be relieved to learn that this is the last instalment of index card art for this year. It's taken me awhile to share it all because I've been so busy with all the other art I've been creating.

I've put three photos. For this first image, because the paint is so shimmery, it just doesn't come across with a straight facing forward photo and I really wanted to try and show you the proper full effect of the shimmer.

The rest of these photos are all mixed media.

The first two are working dry watercolour crayons onto a wet background and letting it all bleed out.

The rest are all mixed media collage. Mostly based around one large scrap of tissue paper, which I managed to stretch over almost all of the cards. 

Many of you know that I take part in this index card art challenge every year. However, this year has been very different. There was no big index card art group on Facebook. However. I joined with a very small number of fellow artists. And we shared our work within our small group, which was very nurturing and supportive. We've helped each other along the way to learn and explore new techniques and new ways of creativity. It's been great fun, and we've stayed together since.

Show my friends that concludes index card out for 2022. Thank you for looking at the mall and thank you for your kind comments and support.

Until next time 

Stay safe. Stay well.

Debbie.

Artful August Part Two {the good, the bad, and the downright ugly}

 Hello Friends!

Thank you for all your lovely words of encouragement last week.

Here is what I did for the second week of Artful August.

Day 8, prompt was Circle.  This started out with a plan which quickly went wrong before plummeting into the abyss of What Was I Thinking.  Still in the interests of honesty I'm sharing it, ugly art though it be.

So, to save face, I made this one.  I've always wanted to give this a go and I really enjoyed the process so will do more in the future.

Day 9 Prompt was Box.

Lots of little squares and rectangles, deconstructed boxes; mixed media.  Not in the zone with this and not sure if it's finished either.  At least I'm happy with the colours.

Day 10 and jumping ahead to the prompt Metal. Spectrum Noir metallic pencils on some horribly cheap black paper.  Metallic media always work better on black substrate.

This just sort of happened, popped up on it's own doing, a doodle page testing, or sampling, gel pens on black paper

back on track

Day 11 prompt was Foliage.  Alcohol pens, gel pens, Posca pens

Day 12 Paint.  Inspired by the online art course "Flow and Line" by Robin Sturis, on which I was lucky enough to win a seat.  Quite a departure from my usual!

Day 13 I skipped ahead to the prompt Shape, quite by accident, so will add today's prompt of Building to my list of skipped prompts to do later.  Just random squares and rectangles using a set of Derwent Graphitint paint pans.  I love the muted tones of this particular set of paints and this turned into a sort of sampler piece for the paint.

Day 14 Shape {take 2} I was curious after the previous painting to see what happens with a different shape and medium. While it has it's own merits, imo it isn't nearly as successful as the previous one.

Inktense, micron pen, gel pen

Don't forget to pop back mid week for ICAD updates!

Which is your favourite? And why?

Until next time

Stay safe, Stay well

Debbie xoxo