Spring flowers

To be in tone with the season, and because I did not play with paint in a while, I decided to make myself a paper garden. I used acrylic paint, acrylic ink, collage and watercolors and varied the way I applied them on the mat board.

For the first one, I used alcohol drops to create round shapes for the flowers: 

Here, I gessoed over the first attempt and applied fluid acrylics, some collage on the vase and white ink splatters.

For the third one, I used acrylic ink and a straw to mix the colors and create interesting areas for the leaves and flowers.

 Here I used watercolor washes. The colors appear a bit washed out in the scanned version. I applied workable fixative after the watercolor dried to be able to add more color on top without the watercolor lifting. The board was primed with soft gel. I might darken the colors on this one a bit. Oh, I also used salt and that lightened the colors a lot.

Pre and post Loomis

Spring is nowhere to be seen...so I am using photo references to draw. I usually draw myself - obvious reason: always available. But I decided to stop doing that because I realized I unconsciously transfer my features to other faces. I have a picture taken in Utah of my friend and I used it.

First attempt:

I could not believe  the result, I think if I would see this by mistake before going to bed I'd have nightmares.

So I tried again:

OhMyGod!!! What's with those eyes??!! I pulled out Loomis's book and also checked the videos on proko.com. This is third trial:

At least this one looks more human. There is one major problem though - it does not look like my friend at all. Not even 5% like the sketches made Monday.

I think the problem is with the angles. The only time I was able to draw a face that resembled the original was when I scrupulously paid attention to the angles. This is the next step - redo the sketch, apply Loomis to find the placement of the features and then pay attention to the angles. I enlarged the pic on my computer, hopefully that will help. This will definitely be the topic of practice for the next few weeks at the portrait meeting.

Terraskin

Paper made of stone ... who would have thought. I had to try it. I had two sample papers and decided to try first pencil and pen and ink. I am planning to try watercolor, acrylic and collage. I like the smoothness of the paper, very easy to work with. It was harder to erase the pencil and also to lift wet ink. In fact, the ink dried almost instantaneously. For me, this is a bit of a drawback because I draw slow and make mistakes that need correction. I will keep playing with it and use some of the papers as covers for pamphlet booklets.

My model was a picture of Orson Wells in Falstaff. Sorry, Orson ...

Pantry shelf

I've been wanting to draw the mess in my pantry for a while now and I finally did it. I recycled some watercolor paper with a couple of layers of acrylic ground for pastels and decided to use pan pastels for color. I bought them a while back and hardly ever used them - one of those impulse buys that leave me perplexed today ...

I can hardly believe it took me two hours to add color to this 6 x 3 sketch...but I liked the exercise. I might do it again in the future and paint a face instead of bottles and jars.

Exploring the self-portrait - 1

I am taking another workshop with Jane Davies. Lots of fun. The only thing I regret is that I did not have time to play more. These are from week 1 - I used black and white photocopies of my face.

Junk mail book - 2

Second attempt at junk mail books:

Composition studies - grid

 These were a lot of fun ...

Grid composition - collage only:

Composition studies - cruciform composition

The square ones are on salvaged canvass papers and the rectangular ones, on mat board.

Composition studies - multishapes

It took a while to get it right ...I liked the first one, but it felt a bit off - too much empty space at the bottom of the page and too many floating shapes.

I added few more shapes and voila ...

Composition studies - two and three shapes

I like how these ones turned out...

I tried one using Shiva paint sticks - I like their buttery texture.

Horizon line composition studies

Other studies from the composition class:

H&H

Hydrangea and hibiscus, that is. I bought these plants for the new patio - the hybiscus is a present.

Frankestein in action

I got the painting bug. House painting that is. So I went to Home Depot to pick some paint chips. Once I got home, I separated them in two piles: "not a chance" and "maybe". I then decided to paint something on one of the discarde ones. I started with this:

I applied a blot of watercolor and switched the paper around. It takes a while to dry because the paint chip is shiny, so there is some time to play around. From there I got here:

Frankestein in action - not sure what this is really. Flying elephant? Monkey? Worm?

I glued some paper on the back and painted a light coat of gesso:

I even made an envelope for it from a magazine page:

Kinda cute ....they could be made into mini-journals, thank-you notes, invitation and so on ...

Recuerdo

I have been playing around with the blog for a while. I wanted to customize the background image, but nothing fitted the purpose. They are too bog, too small, too busy, too whatever. Then I made another collage, trying to keep it low (using a muted palette), but it still came out too busy to tile for the background.

I started gluing papers down, then I applied gesso, black paint, a variation of beige craft paints, then I lifted some paint with alcohol.

I do not want a busy background. For now, white will do. I like classy things and white might just be it. I am also crawling my way through GIMP tutorial. This is what I use to crop the images - GIMP and Irfanview. Both free ...
Oh and why recuerdo - this is what is written on the paper under the bouquet of roses. Recuerdo - memory

Peekaboo

At least once a week I cannot sleep through the night. I suppose this is one of those aging-related symptoms that nobody bothers to talk about, since forty is the new thirty, right? I eat healthy, I exercise, I cut the caffeine - nada. I spent quite a few nights this summer twisting and turning and I know that does not help. So when I woke up again at 3AM and could not sleep, I decided I needed another plan. I figures I will paint for a little while, get tired and go back to sleep.

I started working on this - canvass paper 6x6:

I still wasn't sleepy and by now, it was about 4:30AM. Hmmmm .... I decided to make fused paper using some scraps found on my desk. I used an old book page and I glued scraps of papers on both sides of the paper, sandwiching the book page.

Still no luck on the sleeping front, so I started doodling on photocopies of my journal pages and watched an episode of NCIS LA.