A Floral Challenge

"If an inspiration comes back to you at least 3 times you should take it as a serious

sign from your inner self and consider acting on it."

from The Artist's Quest for Inspiration

Floral has been coming back to me more than three times.  I guess it's time to act on it so that is my 100 Day Project for 2023.  My plan is to try different media, different substrates and different techniques.  I have an assortment of small odd sized papers so those will be the first substrates. Documenting the process is another part of the plan.

The first day I had to clear space on my desk and one of the things left there was a stone my friend Terry brought me from Spain.  She said I was supposed to be able to draw with it so I made a few marks to try it.  It worked and the marks sort of started to look like a flower so what could I do but see where it took me. Ink, gesso, a rock from Spain and lots of fun with brush, pen and fingertips. And I posted it as my first entry in the journal.  

Day 2's piece started by getting the paper wet and adding some yellows along with a bit of Ultramarine Blue and Quin Rose.  I'm happy with the result but it wasn't as much fun as drawing with the stone. And then I ruined it by adding an ink outline.

Today's isn't done.  Once again, watercolor but this time I did the ink drawing first.  Waiting for it to dry before finishing and I have other things that I need to work on so probably won't finish this until late this afternoon.  I am posting my progress on Instagram if you'd like to follow along. Here's a link to my instagram account 

Working on Some Collaborative Pieces

 And one of those pieces is an Exquisite Corpse.  These are two views of my section in process.

There are 7 of us involved in this.  For my portion I'm experimenting with doing some abstract

 combining acrylics and watercolor.

If you aren't familiar with Exquisite Corpse here's a brief description. Each of us adds to a

composition in sequence by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person

contributed. All I could see when I started this was a row of black and white checks and a bit

of the quin gold.

A bit of history from Wikipedia -- I edited the information.  The technique was invented

by surrealists and is similar to an old parlour game called consequences in which players

write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the

next player for a further contribution. Surrealism principal founder André Breton reported that it

started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. Breton said the diversion started

about 1925, but Pierre Reverdy wrote that it started much earlier, at least as early as 1918.

Later the game was adapted to drawing and collage, in a version called picture

consequences, with portions of a person replacing the written sentence fragments of the

original. The person is traditionally drawn in four steps: The head, the torso, the legs and the

feet with the paper folded after each portion so that later participants can't see earlier

portions.The name is derived from a phrase that resulted when Surrealists first played the

game, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau." ("The exquisite corpse shall drink the new

 wine.")

My grandson and I play it once in awhile.  When we play we do people; my artist friends and

I are doing whatever we choose.  This one had no original instruction so who knows what the

 end result will be.

And speaking of my art friends, I'm going to introduce them to you over the next few weeks.

Maybe not one a week but I hope to introduce all of them before our 3rd annual Art Tribe Exhibit 

at the Gallery Uptown in July.

At Odd Sides With Urban Sketchers West Michigan

 Missed painting with my Tuesday Group this week but joined some of them to sketch at Odd Sides here in Grand Haven with #uskwestmichigan.  It was fun meeting new sketchers and at a place the Tuesday group often meets in cold weather.

I had recently tried foreshortening sketching a chair and decided I needed to work on that so I choose this long view.  I really do need to work on foreshortening!  At the last minute everyone behind the front counter moved and I spied the coffee grinder.  This is the type of thing I like to sketch so I did a very quick one.  The elipse is off but I don't care, next time we're there I'll do it again more carefully.

And I'm keeping up with my 5 Minute Challenge, now 82 collages done and 2 and 1/2 eco dyed journals used.  This morning I tried something different, I used stitching to add a piece of bark that I picked up on my walk yesterday. 

Another type of fragment.  This may lead to a whole new series.  Time will tell.

Back To The Challenge But First

 My new travel journal.

We headed south for a short break from the cold and I took along a small concertina sketchbook.  Normally I do postcards and/or take lots of photos with the intention of putting them in separate travel journal once home.  The last part rarely happens.  

This year I had intended to do some collage with ephemera collected along the way.  That didn't happen.  Instead I ended up doing what I normally do on postcards but the sketches are already in the sketchbook. I believe this will be my new form of travel sketchbook.  I can make it with a page a day for however many days we will be away.  Perfect. Here are a few more pages. Some still need color but I've made color notes or taken photos so that can be added.

I've already added the color to the fish that were everywhere at the Thirsty Turtle, an excellent place for seafood in Port St. Lucie, FL

And now, back home and back to the #100daychallenge -- this is a new old piece that got put away because I had no clue what to do with it.  It now has three new layers.  The last one being some collage, papers that I unwrapped yesterday.  More on that after the challenge piece.

The black scribble was the first new layer followed by the graphite scribbles.  The graphite scribbles were done with my new carpenter's mechanical pencil.  Love it, the pencil that is.  And today I added collage in the lower right corner.  That's some of the paper I unwrapped yesterday from the bundles I had put out behind our garage last December.  Here are the bundles unwrapped...

And now I think I'm caught up and hopefully will get back on track.  I've been trying to post every week but traveling got in the way.

Hooray! I Don't Have To Learn A New Blog

Welcome to my blog. I write about my journey as an artist.  I'll be posting about my process, why I paint, what I paint, my art journals and things that get my attention.  Along the way I'll also post about different artists that I like and show you some of their work.  I hope you find it interesting.

This isn't a new blog as I had been planning. My blogging nightmare finally ended. Blogger kept telling me I wasn't me so I finally gave up and thought I'd start a new blog to go along with the website I'm working on.  Problem is the website is slow going as is a new blog.  I suppose you can teach an old dog new tricks but it's harder.

Interestingly Blogger wasn't the only one that seemed to not recognize me and after several tries, a few chats and a couple phone calls to one of those other sites I got a suggestion to try changing browsers.  Thank you WSJWine for finally coming up with something that worked.  I changed and now can get in to all three that I had been locked out of. This old dog is so happy for that.  Still slow going on the website but I don't need to reinvent the blog.

There's been a lot going on since my last post before Christmas. The Ukraine is the biggest. This little sketch is in memory of my Ukrainian friend Chrystyna and prayers for her home country.

There has been so much more happening in my studio.  First, #100daychallenge is on again and  every day I've been working on a huge pile of pieces that I never finished.  I vowed to finish them.  So far I've been happy with some -- here are two of them. The ones I end up not liking I'll gesso over and start again.

                             

I also took a 5 day workshop on bookmaking.  I've made a lot of books but have always just figured out a way to do it. When I saw this workshop available on line I decided to try learning a correct way of doing it and I did. These are the ones I did in the workshop and I tried out one of them.

 My first attempts are not the best but I learned a lot and will make more. 

There's been a lot more going on but I think this is enough for now.  It's good to be back

More of the Challenge & Some Therapy

I was behind but caught up with my dailies… Here are a few more of them….

 

 

 

The color one was done with pen, ink and watercolor. 

And the therapy… I spent yesterday afternoon making acrylic skins… only because I love watching the colors mingle.  Here are two that are simply black and white, one with a bit of gold.

 

I will probably use these for collage, then again, maybe not.  We shall see

The Challenge and more on Etsy

I’m a day behind on the pen and ink challenge but I plan to catch up tomorrow.  Today has been a play date with my grandson.

I’ve also posted more of my daily sketches on my Etsy site.  This is one of them,,,

More of the pen and ink coming when I catch up…

An October Pen and Ink Challenge

This is day 3 of an October pen and ink challenge, one pen and ink drawing every day.  Here’s a link to the challenge if you’re interested in participating. This is my day 3 and the most complex one I’ve done to date.

This one is from a photo by a photographer friend, Ed Post.  He and I are participating in an exhibit in December – the artist paints the photographers photo.  This one isn’t going to be the painting I don’t think, there is another more complex one that I really like and plan to see what I can do to simplify it.

My usual practice is to do a careful pencil drawing first to work out what stays, what goes and where the values are.  When I finish that drawing I’ll post it, meanwhile here is 2 of the challenge

Day 1 was a flower and I lost it somewhere in cyberspace.

Sketchbook Inspiration

I’m still doing Valri’s challenge and had an aha moment in the process.  I love to draw and often do the drawing first before painting; however, having done a very careful drawing, I end up being too tight when I paint. 

When I started doing the poured paintings I thought I had the answer; however, being a master at being a Jack of All trades and masking fluid having a shelf life, when I finally got to painting my masking fluid was too gummy.  The only answer was to buy it fresh when I was going to paint.  That has other complications but it’s doable.  If you’re not a regular follower, here’s an example of one of my poured pieces,

carefully drawn and then mask and pour the paint so it isn’t tight.

With the challenges I’ve been doing them in a handmade sketchbook made from junk papers that I’ve used to mop up paint or clean a brush or roller when making monoprints or monotypes.  Since the paper was already marked up with paint I could do a careful drawing and not worry about how I painted it.  The result is a loose look that I like very much.  So, the AHA moment – why not put some marks down on a larger sheet and do the same thing.

Next week I’ll be in Harbor Springs, one of my two annual art retreats with my friend Terry.  She doesn’t have a web presence for her art so I can’t provide a link.  However, I can tell you she is an excellent pastelist.

I’ll post the results of my week when I get back – good or bad.

More Challenge Images

I have no idea what kind of fish this guy is but I sure do love all of his wavy lines and colors.  A couple more from the fish challenge,..

This one was just there in the tea bag…

And the last  day I did two on the page, the bottom one I planned to do, the top one was just there.

I may flush him out later but for now, it’s on to the next challenge, Pigs.

Sorting and More of the Challenge

I’m in the midst of sorting, rearranging and getting rid of stuff in my studio so I’m not getting much art done.  I am managing to work a little by continuing with Valri’s Art Challenges.

The next round of Valri’s Challenge was Still Life.  The pears and strawberries is my favorite of the ones I did.  I’ve been doing all of them in the same type of sketchbook I used for the birds, handmade out of junk papers that I used for picking up paint or cleaning a brush or roller. 

I shouldn’t call it junk paper, some of it is Dick Blick’s cheap drawing paper and it’s a decent paper. After the Still Life challenge we did people.  I decided if I was going to do people on junk paper it ought to be me that is looking a lot less than perfect so I did some self portraits.  This is my favorite of those….

The next challenge was boats which is a favorite subject of mine; however, it was during my husband’s rehab from the knee surgery and I was not getting much done.  I did manage to do one very day but not as well as I would have liked.  Here’s my favorite of those…

And now we’re doing Fish…. It’s another subject I like but I do more fantasy fish than the real thing.  I did manage do do one that is real, a rainbow trout, and I’m pleased with how he turned out….

The partial circle top left is part of a coffee filter from our hotel at Disney World and the rectangle lower right is a tea bag.  Both were glued to the junk paper just to add another dimension.

Time to get back to my sorting….

The Bird Challenge & Handmade Sketchbooks

My most recent work has been non-representational and mixed media.   And most recently, I’ve been working on a Challenge my friend Valri Ari threw out on Facebook.  More on that later but here’s today’s piece for the challenge.

 

The mixed media is a combination of monoprint and collage.  I’m  using more acrylics and one of the things I do when I’m using them is keep an extra sheet of paper next to me that I can use to blot some of the paint off a piece.  I also use the paper to clean my brayer as I’m printing..My intent in using that paper was to create papers for collage.

Enter sketchbooks.  I use a lot of them.  There are always a couple in the studio and I keep one in my purse and in my car.  I thought I would try to make some signatures of my own using the same paper but without anything on it.  The idea being to use the signatures as the sketchbook and eventually putting some of them together into one book.

One of the blogs I follow is Jane Davies.  She is the one who gave me the idea of lifting paint onto a separate sheet and she sometimes puts those sheets together into a handmade sketchbook.  I thought it would be a good way to work out some non-representational ideas so I made a few of those too.

A spread in one can end up looking like this….

The idea is to connect them somehow or use each page individually. I hadn’t been brave enough to use them until Valri Ari’s bird challenge came along.  The first challenge was birds, 20 in 20 days.  One of my signatures has 20 individual pages so I got brave and decided to give it a shot.  I am loving the results… Here’s the cover of the Bird Challenge…

For this one I’m doing individual pages, here are the rest that are done to date..

You can see that the last two are from a spread that is in the middle. 

I’m looking forward to the next challenge and using another of my signatures.