Bee confident ...

The new art course I have just started is "Collage, watercolour and mixed media" and is only partly structured - so room to do my own thing! It is run by the same local artist - Kay Mullen -  as the drawing course I've just completed (see this post).

I love collage, so that is what attracted me to it, but it would also challenge me on the drawing and painting front too!

The first week we concentrated on making the collage background.  I'm using an A3 piece of watercolour paper, which I had to pre-stretch, but I will be moving on to half imperial size, which is 22" x 15". I have never pre-stretched watercolour paper before, but it was quite easy, though I had to use the bath as I don't have a receptacle large enough for A3 - and certainly not for half imperial!

The paper is fixed to a piece of thick MDF board with brown paper tape.

So, here is the first stage; I've used book pages, sheet music, Japanese newsprint and paper pattern tissue - oh - and a raffle ticket! And no knocking back with any kind of wash - scary!

I then did some stencilling with modelling paste which I coloured with acrylic paint.

Our second session was mainly taken up with drawing, and I chose a bee as my main focal point - done with pens and coloured pencils.  The wings are painted with clear Wink of Stella. Having done the drawing course I feel more confident about drawing, but this was another scary moment for me - drawing on top of my collage!

I finished off with a bit of foiling, and also some hexagonal pieces to give it more balance.  I've photographed it at an angle to try and catch the wing glimmer and foiling.

The Craft Barn challenge this week is about masks/stencils - good timing!

So ... Bee-lieve in yourself!

I think that is enough bee puns - unless you can leave me an appropriate comment!

She stood in the storm ...

... and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.
Elizabeth Edwards

This week's Craft Barn challenge is "stamping", the same as this month's Craft Stamper Take It Make It challenge.

I've recently discovered some delightful stamps from the Unity Stamp Company, which don't seem to be available here in the UK, but I found some in the US.

I'm using paper made for acrylic paint as the base, as I like the texture. I started with blown Brushos, and coloured with Distress Pens.

Started my new art course this week, so I'll be blogging about that soon.

In the meantime - happiness is discovering the new!

Hello Autumn ...

It is time for the September Craft Barn calendar challenge, and the key words are brown and trees/leaves.

I think it is too cold for September - so the colour should be icy blue!

Anyway, took to my Brushos (again!), and sprinkled and spritzed some autumnal colours.  I then found some Glassine paper - that brown crunchy stuff that came out under the Tim Holtz name some time ago.  I bought a pad of it at the time, and it has been sulking at the bottom of a drawer ever since.

I die-cut some leaves, then stamped some, scrunched some, and used a bit of gilding wax too; created a cascade of dry leaves - reminiscent of my childhood love of running through a pile of leaves (not the soggy ones though!).

Again, I was inspired to write another haiku -

Autumn leaves the tree
Cloaked in impetuous hues
Bold in winter's face

Mirror, mirror ...

Time for another Fearless Four get together, and the challenge this time was to start from black and use metallic and iridescent colours.

I used a mirror for the base, which started out black anyway.  I added some paste through a stencil, and some  hot glue drips.

I found some wooden pieces which I decided to use too.

Then I covered the whole thing in black acrylic paint.

When that was dry, I gave it a wash in a very diluted Old Gold Pinflair Liquid Buff It paint.

The shimmer doesn't show in this photo - but it is there!















Then I used various colours of neat Liquid Buff It, together with some Pebeo iridescent paint.

Finally, I added a couple of coats of gloss varnish and some crackle glaze - it's quite subtle and difficult to see in the photo.

Reminds me of that oil on water look.

What did the other's get up to?

Monica's mirror

Lin's triple panels

Linda's mirror




















Another fab day with good friends, a good lunch and lots of paint!  What more can a girl ask?

Going round in crazy circles!

Firstly can I welcome new followers, and also say thank you for all the comments I receive - I love reading them and they are truly appreciated.

This week's Craft Barn challenge is about sprays, and the current Paper Artsy challenge is all about circles ...

I'm still into my Crazy bird stamps, so I sprayed a piece of card with some Dylusions sprays, stamped a load of  the birds, cut them out, and added another layer of eyes and beaks - some of those dies are soooo tiny, I keep dropping them in the waste bin and then spend ages fishing them out!

The background is Brushos blown around with my Color Spritzer, the tool that you can attach pens to, to get an airbrushed effect.  Mine is made by RenArt and I've had it for years, but I think Tim Holtz does one too. Anyway, I don't use it with pens, but it is great for blowing paint around!

I then cut a circle from a piece of sheet music to create a circular swing, and added some words from a Paper Artsy stamp set.

Maybe it is time to say happiness is singing in the rain - as we are getting rather a lot of the wet stuff!

2B or not 2B

I recently completed my intensive drawing course - which involved every Monday for 5 weeks.  Each day we covered a different aspect, and each day was mentally exhausting - but worth it!

I started off using just an HB pencil, but did progress to using 2B, 4B and 6B.

Each session involved quite a few exercises, but I have only shown one piece from each day, as I don't want you to get too bored!

The first thing we covered was line.  Now this course is all about using the right side of your brain, so for our second exercise we had a Picasso line drawing which we had to up size and copy, but do it upside down.  I was quite amazed at the result.  Here is my effort right side up!

Quite difficult to photograph drawings, so click on each picture to get a better look!

The second topic we covered was negative space.  Again, producing a drawing upside down, but only drawing the negative spaces.  I had no idea what it was looking like right side up, but after shading all the negative spaces I had drawn ...

Next was perspective.  I have always found this tricky, but I was starting to realise the key is only drawing what you actually see; using kebab sticks for getting the angles also really helped.

Here is one of my home work pieces, which involved drawing a corner of a room, in this case my stairs.

Session four concentrated on tone. This was one exercise we did, which was to randomly fold a length of paper, and draw it.

And this was a piece of homework - a rose.

The final session was to draw a still life group and we could choose the subject matter.  Now I don't have much in the way of ornaments or knick-knacks, so decided to raid my craft room and took along some brushes, my bee vase, pots of medium, a brayer, some tubes of paint and a rag.

This took about 5 hours.

I am quite stunned at how far I've come after just 5 days, and that is all down to my teacher. I now feel equipped to develop my painting skills further.

Happy drawing!

Not pink elephants then!

The Craft Barn calendar challenge words for August are pink and butterflies.

I decided to see if plain, heavyweight card could cope with collage and paint for the background.  It doesn't, too much stuff on the card means it struggles to lie flat, even after being squished by half a ton of books!

First I took 2 pieces of A4 card (I always do things in twos, not sure why!), and adhered some book pages, sheet music and paper pattern pieces with matt medium.

Then I used some watered-down acrylic paints in shades of pink.

Now, why I did both pieces pink I have no idea - just got carried away!

I also applied some white paint using a scrunched up kitchen paper towel.





I took one piece and cut it down to 10 x 8 - the size of the calendar I'm making; then drew a butterfly using my Derwent Inktense pencils.  I also splattered some paint, and used a credit card and bottle tops to make some marks.  The darker circles are in antique silver paint, which give a good bounce of light, but they have come out grey in the photo.

I was in a pensive mood, so wrote this Haiku -

August's graceful breeze
Wings colour across my face
Laughing butterfly

Colour me happy!

The Craft Barn weekly challenge is to use pens and pencils, which also happens to be this month's Craft Stamper challenge too.

I used a Gelli print for the background, and got the Crazy Birds stamp set out, together with the recently acquired matching die set; yet to be used!

I stamped and heat embossed a couple of the birds, then used my favourite colouring pencils - Coloursoft Pencils from Derwent.

It took me an age to sort the 18 dies out, as there are 3 for each bird - bit like a jigsaw! Anyway, I've numbered all the pieces as I don't want to go through that process again!  Quite tricky lining the dies up, and I've only used the main dies, but much much easier than a pair of scissors - especially those quiffs!

Found some words which are stamped onto a piece of sheet music that has been lightly gesso-ed to knock it back.

Finally, took a fine liner pen to frame everything.

Oh to fly away from this miserable weather!

Serendipity at work ...

Glass is such a beautiful material, the way it catches the light; and I've had a go at glass blowing (see this post).

Last September, at the Sandown craft show I tried stained glass, and made this glass suncatcher at a workshop, which now hangs in my kitchen window (the glass was all pre-cut).

A friend has done stained glass for over 20 years, and four of us got together to have a play with all the off-cut bits of glass that have accumulated over time - and there is quite a lot!

Now, I'm not the most expert at soldering (to say the least), but I had great fun making these funky birds.

Take an odd shaped piece of glass, see what comes to mind, do a bit of reshaping (I did get the hang of cutting the glass!), then add other bits; in this case beaks and wings.  Finally add wire legs and a bit of solder for the eyes.

Not sure where to hang these yet, but I love them, they make me happy!

Keep it simple ...

The latest Paper Artsy challenge is all about flowers, and this week's Craft Barn challenge is "clean and simple".

I love flowers, but I am not naturally clean and simple.

I had already stamped and white embossed some Paper Artsy flowers onto Brusho'd watercolour paper, so I tried to be a bit minimalist!  I added some dots of glitter glue into the flower centres, but they don't really show in the photo.

Here is the result.

Happy August!