Artful August Part One

Hello Friends!

Thank you to everyone who left such generous comments, so kindly welcoming me back.

After ICAD finished, I decided to work on another online art challenge, Rachel Greig's Artful August.  A month of 31 daily prompts using any mediums or substrates of your choice.  Unless otherwise stated, I'm using A5 student grade watercolour card.

I'll continue to share my ICADs separately from Artful August, so you'll know to look out for a midweek ICAD post and a weekend Artful August post from me for a few weeks until I'm caught up.

Day 1 Garden.  I reworked an earlier piece that I made in memory of a friend who had an underwater garden in Bermuda. She used to tell me of it's beauty, and how she would snorkel around to tend to it.  Mixed media paints and inks.

Day 2 Shimmer.  I used a set of new shimmer paint pans to emulate moonshine on the land and sea.  Aren't they yummy?

I made a short video to try and best show the shimmer paint effect.

I was very happy with how the moon turned out.

Day 3 Numbers  I was struggling with this and ended up being rather obvious.  I must add, though, that I did Not use a stencil for this, rather I bound two nicely sharpened pencils together to mimic italic script.

Day 4  Soft.  A mixed media collage on a Brusho background, using inks, tissue paper, silk paper, bubble wrap and more.  I'm very happy with this as it's not something I do often and it took me well out of my comfort zone.

Day 5 was Envelope, but I have set that aside for another day, so jumped ahead and picked Botanical from the list instead.  Another Brusho background {I do love Brushos} and then I looked for shapes within, outlined with Micron pen, and detailed using paint pens.

Day 6 "Linear"  A bit busy today so falling back on one I made earlier.  Once a Blue Peter Girl, always a Blue Peter Girl! 😁  A5 watercolour card with alcohol ink pens.  Nice and bright to wake me up.  Neurographic art.

Day 7 "Bright".  Well, I could have used that last one as it's very bright!  Sunflowers are my favourite. Freestyle drawn from memory, not observed. Brusho, Inktense, Sakura paint, Derwent Graphitint, and graphite pencil 

I've called this "Sunflowers Don't Just Come in Yellow"

I have promised myself to do sunflower sketches and paintings from direct observation.

Do you have a favourite one?  I'd love to know, and why!

Until next time

Stay Safe, Stay Well

Debbie 

Surprise!

Hello Friends!

Long time no see, but I'm going to give blogging a go again.  Little bit of housekeeping first of all.

1.  I apologise to anyone who has legitimately wanted to comment, but day after endless day I spent far too much time deleting spam.  I know many of you will understand, but it undermined my taking a break.

2.  I had to fiddle with Blogger, didn't I?  In doing so, I may have inadvertently unfollowed rather a lot of you, so if you read this, please leave a short "hello" to help me reconnect.

3.  Update on me.  As some of you who kindly kept in touch know, it's been a long, rough winter as I suffered many weeks of side effects to my medications.  Thankfully, I was over the worst by early February, but I still suffer from extreme tiredness.  Naturally, that is impacting severely on my day to day life.  I find myself experiencing sudden onset of going to sleep.  I sit down for a cup of tea and next thing I'm waking up two hours later.  This is not funny, it is very inconvenient and often I wake up in the arm chair after midnight, shivering with cold.

Onwards!

With low energy I haven't been going out very often.  Also, I have no walking buddy and so until this is resolved my witterings won't include much in the way of new photographs. 

This year, I did take part in the annual ICAD Daisy Yellow art challenge and was honoured to be invited to join a small, online group of sixty members taking part.  It's been my happiest, most productive ICAD experience ever!  It took me a week to find my stride, but then one of the other creative spirits introduced us to Neurographic Art practice and I flew with it!  

Here are my first week of cards, while I was following prompts

ASTERISK

PEONY

LABYRINTH

KEY {KEYSTONE}

FLAMINGO or PINK

DAYDREAM {Wales qualify for the FIFA World Cup}

ROOT

Then, I was introduced to Neurographic Art and took off running.  If you would like to find out more, there's plenty of information and examples on line, but here's my first week of exploring this new to me concept, it's the second week of ICAD.

My very first go

This was done using my non dominant hand, which also has the worst tremors.  You can see the difference, with more jagged edges and less smoothness.  There are some interesting shapes developing to which I can attribute personal meaning.  Consequently I decided not to colour it in, as not everything in my life is black and white now.  I can't go into more detail as it's too raw and personal.

Do you like them?  Do you have a favourite one?  It's no secret that I had the most fun ever this year, and it's the first year I actually completed on time!  I'm now doing another online art challenge, set by Rachel Greig, but more about that another time.  Oh, and I won a seat on Robin Sturis's "Flow and Line" art course too!

One of the last walks I managed to accomplish was a carefully paced stroll around the Cathedral at Easter.  I hadn't been there in two years due to both the pandemic restrictions and being poorly.  However, I wanted to see the Lilies of Remembrance which used to be at Christmas.  The list of names I submit is growing longer each passing year. 

I hope I haven't detained you, and that you've enjoyed my pictures.  I'll share more of ICAD next time!  

Until then, I hope everyone is doing well and life is being as kind to you as it can be in these strange days of continuing Covid, rising prices, and global climate issues.

Debbie xoxo