Twinchies {what is a Twinchie, you ask?}

Hello Friends!

A Twinchie It's a small piece of art worked on a two inch square substrate. The substrate can be anything you like. It can be watercolour card. Yupo paper. Wood. Fabric. You could even use a cut up cornflakes packet if you want. as long as your size is two inches square.

I decided. on two things for this challenge. Firstly to use as much of my Kuratake paints to get the feel for them and to experiment with them a little. secondly, not to invest oodles of time in this. project. So setting a time limit of no more than about 20 minutes per card. One of the days did take a little bit longer than 20 minutes. But I'm glad I allowed myself that because I'm very pleased with the outcome.

The prompt for day 5 was SPILL.
I did three interpretations over two cards. One was a literal spill of liquid. The other one is a small seascape with light spilling from the lighthouse and the ocean spilling on the shore.

Day 6  was KNOT I did a bow of ribbon and two stylised Celtic knots

Day 7 prompt was TOUCHING so I created pattern by touching the painted surfaces with a damp fingertip.  Three twinchies, and also playing with a collage editing element.

Day 8 prompt was BOX so I did a tongue~in~cheek interpretation.  Five of them!

Day 9 was  FERN

Since I have discovered how to create a photo montage I don't have to post individual photos!

Day 10 RIVER. This was a challenge. I've seen so many multiple images put together to make a bigger image I just had to give it a go. It was another challenge getting the composite in the correct order!

Day 11 POEM

A tricksy one today. I will likely return with something else, but wrote this quote on the back of a preprepared tile.

and finally ~~~ 

Day 12 MOON

That wraps up this challenge.  There are always a lot of challenges happening this time of year, but I'm taking a short break from challenges now. The next one I will be picking up is not a challenge, but an online retreats.   It's time once more for the Artist's Soul Gathering, hosted by Ida Andersen Lang, where we will be honouring the divine feminine in over a dozen works of art taught by twelve different creative spirits. 

Heartfelt thanks for your support and your kind words and encouragement over these past few weeks.  I do hope you will come and have a look at what I'll be doing in the ASG.  I won't be doing them all, as these are larger pieces of work, quite labour intensive, and therefore time consuming. as I do not sell my art, I'm afraid I cannot devote all day, every day, to it much as I would dearly love to. 

Until next time.

Stay well Stay safe.

Debbie x

ICAD Round Up

Hello Friends

Today sees the end of the first four weeks of icad 2023.  Where has the month gone It certainly has flown by for me. I'm sure it has for you. of course, doing a small piece of art every day helps the time fly by whether I want it to or not.  It was my intention when I set out 30 days ago. to do a small piece of Art generally founded around tangling. well for the most part, I've managed to do that a couple of gone off course. However, in the last week or so I seem to have settled down very much into doing sort of mandalas. even when I use a compass and set square, I'm afraid I'm not very good at getting them perfect, like a lot of people do. Still, it's good practise to stop being such a perfectionist So maybe that's what I'm going to be learning out of icad this year.

Here are this week's pieces which round up the month of June.

24/61 "Bubble"

25/61  off prompt

26/61 off prompt

27/61 off prompt

28/61 "Asanoha pattern"

29/61  Evergreen

30/61 off prompt

31/61 

off prompt, found my old {complete} Spirograph it won't win any awards, but it sure was fun!

32/61  "Cottage"  I did a painted Log Cabin quilt pattern

Until next time

stay stay. safe well.

Debbie xx 

LifeBook Taster Sessions part 2

Hello friends!

This finishes up what I completed during Life Book 2023 taster sessions. It's been a while now, since I've not made art daily. I started on June the 1st with two months of index card art. That was followed with Artful August. Then there was Ida Lang Andersen's Artist Soul Gathering. And finally, Tamara Laporte's Life Book.  It's a lot of art!

I'm still making art. I've no plans to stop now until I can no longer hold a paint brush. October is my birth month, and I will be treating myself to some new art supplies for my birthday.  I am going to get, amongst other things, some professional quality watercolour paints. I haven't decided which brand yet. I think I'd like a set of half or quarter pans rather than tubes. Some of the brands I'm looking at are Daniel Smith, Schminke, Windsor and Newton, and Daler Rowney.  I already have cheaper watercolours, student grade as their known.  Basically, while they are still good quality, they're not as highly pigmented as the professional quality. And there's also the factor of being lightfast. Lightfast means if you hang your painting on the wall, the colour won't fade in a few years. Light affecting pigment is one of the reasons many galleries have subdued lighting.

Recently, someone asked if they could buy some of my work. Unfortunately, I had to refuse, because they have been made as the result of a lesson, and copyright of the images is not mine. However, this offer is why I have to seriously consider painting anything in the future using professional quality paints.  I would not feel comfortable selling something that wasn't made to professional standards.

I have also had someone offer me NFT's for artwork. But I have no idea what these are, and I have no intention of getting involved.

The next lesson I did was Tamara Laporte's "Butterfly Queen". It got a bit out of control with brightness, so I had to knock it back quite considerably to where I could look at it without wearing dark glasses!!!  I changed the symbolism to Christian by placing a Celtic cross design on the forehead instead of the more Pagan style used in the demonstration.  This lesson came at a time of year when I mark the anniversary of the passing of both my parents just three weeks apart. The fact that it includes butterflies seemed very appropriate at this time, because butterflies symbolise rebirth.

I used Neocolours, Derwent paint pens, and Brushos.

The next lesson I did was Mindfulness Mandala, hosted by Angela Murray, a superb class. I really enjoyed the freedom that this gave, taking me way outside my comfort zone of not being perfect. 

Mixed media.

I have struggled somewhat with the white lines but am working through it.  So, I did a second one to test my new ideas.  I gave this one as a birthday card/small gift. It was very well received. 

I'm not altogether sure I'm done with this one yet. I wanted to do one in autumnal colours. I do like the vintage feel that the colours have given.

The colours in this one didn't turn out as I'd hoped, but it's all a learning curve. I learned two new things making this one. It's all good in the end. Not as bright as I'd hoped it would turn out, though.  i am pleased with how well the free hand drawn circle turned out.  

So my friends, that pretty much sums up as far as I got this time. I didn't do as much as I'd hoped. But then I've been busy with other things. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'm struggling to get the garden ready for winter. And that has to take priority now. Next week I start another course. It's hosted by Ida Anderson Lang. It's a ten day long course, but we only produce one piece of work, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. I'll let you know later.

I'm hoping to start sharing work and progress on the garden soon, but in the meantime. I'm taking measures to try and improve my fitness and hope in the near future that I will be starting to go out and about on short rambles again. Maybe a mile or two with the camera. I want to get us back to normal as I possibly can, while I'm still able to.

Until next time.

Stay safe. Stay well.

Debbie xo

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.