Summer of Colour Week 4

This week's colours are two reds and a metalic- very sensual.  I used cad red and crimson red and gold paint (the vertical text). 

I used turquoise underneath as a cool complement to these warm colours and allowed it to show through in the shaped areas.  The painting is collage and acrylic, 10" x 10" on canvas.

I learned a lot with this painting and I felt I had a break-through in my quest to be more painterly and less precise.

Spirals

I love to reference the Golden Mean in my paintings, it is something I consider when putting a composition together, whether on canvas or when photographing something.  I have been doing it for so long now, it is almost automatic.

Unable to quite bend a flexi-rule to a neat spiral, I decided to make some out of wire.  I shall call them Spirulers(c), heh-heh, patent pending!

The Bigger Picture

In yesterday's post, I showed you a painting for Summer of Colour that I made in two pinks and orange.  What I didn't show you, was the bigger picture - the image was just part of a larger whole.

Here is the larger painting in progress, you can see, I have already made changes to the parts shown yesterday.

There is much more still to be done, but I am loving the process.  It is an extension of the ideas that have been forming during my mindfulness sketchbook sessions and it is such fun to be able to get them onto a larger canvas (well, board in this case) at last.

Mindfulness Sketchbook Pages

Things are still very busy in these parts, but I am managing to find time to work in my sketchbooks during my mindfulness sessions, here are a couple of pages that I finished recently.

I really enjoy doing these and am looking forward to experimenting with them on a larger scale soon.

Summer of Colour - Wk 1

The colours for this week are two blues and a green.  I was afraid this was a bit unexciting for me, but by mixing my own blues and by making a nice bright green, I felt the colour addict within me was satisfied.

I mixed ultramarine blue with a little paynes grey for the darker blue, then I  mixed cerulean blue with a little white for a contrasting blue.  For the green, I used pthalo turquoise with lemon yellow.

Sketchbook - Finished

I decided to work in my sketchbook and on a small canvas (10" x 15"), the sketchbook is finished, but the canvas has more work to be done on it.

The Canvas - Work in Progress

Summer of Colour 2015

Mindful Sketchbook page

It starts today (1st June)!

There is a blog, a Facebook page and a Flickr hosted by Kristin of Twinkle Twinkle blog, that runs the  Summer of Colour challenge.  It has been running for the last few years, this year is the fifth and, after wanting to take part since the very beginning, I am finally going to join in.

When I first heard about it, I was working a lot in photography, I used to have a Flickr site and post photos there regularly and fully intended for a couple of years to take part, but for various reasons never managed it.  

I love colour (did you guess?) and this challenge will be great fun for me.  The work can be in any medium, paint, collage, textile, nail art, ATCs - basically anything!  It is open to participants of all levels, beginners to professionals alike, even children.  I shall be working in my sketchbooks, on canvas and on some art jewellery during the six weeks that it is running.

Mindfulness and Art

What do you listen to when you are making art?

I am currently doing a course on Mindfulness and I love it.  It is very helpful for someone like me, who worries a lot about things.  Past hurts and future fears can spoil the current moment we are in and that is a waste of life, really.

So, as I am very busy until the end of June, which is taking me away from doing the art that I want to do, I have decided to be mindful when I do make art, to treasure the moment and enjoy the here and now.

I usually listen to the radio or an audio book when I work, but for half an hour each day, I work in my sketchbooks in silence and savour the moment.

At least I am not wishing my life away as I wait for the end of June to arrive (well, OK, maybe a bit)!

My Messy Studio

I have had several very busy weeks and my time in the studio is very sporadic at the moment.  I get a couple of hours here and there.  I do work on some sketchbook pages, make a clay goddess or add beads to a brooch.  Not much painting has been happening, because that takes a decent block of time.

Because of this, my inner slattern has taken over and this is the current state of my studio.  I think I need to spend some time tidying up this weekend - although I would rather be making art!

Works in Progress

I have two large canvases on the go, both 24" x 36" and they take a lot longer to complete, so all I have to show for my hard work this week are some detail shots.

This is the top left of canvas no.1, I love the play of  pink against the green and the pink scribing pulling the two areas together.

This is bottom right of the same canvas, here I am enjoying the play of green and purple.  There is a lot of texture built up in the many layers that I have applied so far.















This is on canvas no.2 and although it seems chaotic, I love the many layers and the lost and found symbols.

This area is the top left of the painting - just a note here, I quite often flip the paintings around and what starts as the top, may not end as the top!

Both these canvases are going to have some experimental work on them, while I try out layering landscape lines and elements.  It may go horribly wrong, but I have to try!

Large Mixed Media Canvas Completed

Photographing this piece has been a challenge, the blue has a more turquoise tinge to it, but if I adjust that, the red colour goes too orangey.  Oh the fun of photographing artwork properly!

This canvas is over 2 feet wide and exactly 3 feet tall.  I used scaled up versions of some of my favourite stencils, including text for texture and I thoroughly enjoyed working larger.

One of my artistic influences is Mark English, in particular, his landscapes.  The tree stencils I use really do remind me of his work and I get a little buzz every time I use them in my own work.

I revisited his website yesterday and began to wonder if I could make my abstracts look more like landscapes and I noodled around with Photoshop, trying out some digital ideas.  This is the result of layering some other paintings in places on this larger canvas.  Now I need to experiment to figure out how to do this for real!

Juggling Projects

The Liminal Project

I think I have art ADHD, I have so many projects on the go at once - at least there is no time to get bored!

I have more talismans in the works and I started the larger 2' x 3' painting over the weekend and it is coming along great, but needs some more layers.  You can also see in the background of the above photo, there is a board (60 x 80cm, roughly 2'x3') being prepped with texture, ready for another boundaries painting.

As well as the talismans and the large boundaries piece, I sketched out my design for the embroidery piece for the Liminal Project (which is part of a larger work, Embroidered Digital Commons, a long-term collaborative project started in 2002), now I have the fun task of choosing colours.

I rather like the variety of all these projects - they are all different, yet tie in to each other in some way, so although my output may seem scattered, it is, in fact, quite focused.

Goddess of the Night Talisman

I am in the middle of a very busy week, so although some artwork is being done every day, not much is getting finished.

I have plans for a large abstract on the "boundaries" theme and am busily planning some larger stencils so they fill the space adequately and I have stapled a large canvas directly to the wall.   I am looking forward to getting messy on that project soon!

Here is a finished talisman, it feels like night in this one, so I have called her the "Goddess of the Night".

Another project, I am working on is an embroidery section for a collaborative piece based on definitions of the word "liminal".  The section I have chosen to do, sort of fits in with my "boundaries" theme and is:

"the site of the border of any stable system of signs,"

I am at the gathering materials stage and figuring out how to display the words.

New Talismans in Progress

I have some backgrounds prepared, ready to be assembled into more talismans.  They are very satisfying to make, the whole process employs so many different techniques: painting, stenciling, stamping, collage, scribing, sewing and that is before I get to the really fun part of adding the little figures and their jewels.

When I started on the background sheets last week, I took photos, intending to do a step-by-step of the process, but I got involved this week and totally forgot to take more photos.  I will do this at some time, promise!

Finally! A Talisman or Two

After weeks of work, planning, experimenting, testing and learning new things, I have finally finished some of the little 4"x4" talismans that I have been working on.

I have had to learn how to use polymer clay, I have designed my own goddesses and learn how to make moulds of them, I have had to learn how to solder the metal findings and how to attach the figures to the panels securely, without using glue at all.

So here are two, I have more in the making:

EDIT:  They are both now SOLD.

Sneak Previews

I have some small pieces that are going to be more elaborate with more 3D elements, but I shall not say too much, just leave this picture here as a hint of things to come.

Scribble Sunday

10"x10" on Canvas

I love the scribble on this painting, it was my handwriting, gone over the top several times, within a masked area, which forced it to be confined within specific boundaries.

Fearless Friday

Sometimes, the idea you have in your head of how a piece should look, is not what you necessarily end up with!

The triptych that I envisioned for the gym was to have three running figures - one on each panel and this is what it looked like.

 

But then I photographed them and looked at them on my computer and a chance image appeared on my screen - this:

The Finished Paintings

And I really, really liked it!  So now I had a dilemma, keep all three figures or remove the first two.  Luckily I had used Golden Open acrylics and I had a bit of time to scrub the first two images off, keeping that final figure.  

The client was delighted, phew!

Triplicate Tuesday

I have worked these three together, so all their colours are uniform.  Each has it's own voice, though, so they could stand alone.

Usually, I begin my paintings with the darks first and then move to the lighter ones in subsequent layers (of which there are many), but I decided to experiment with the light, transparent colours first and move towards the darker, more opaque colours as the painting progressed.  It has resulted in quite vibrant lights, requiring less paint to get them to shine. There also are subtle colour gradations as transparent colour on transparent colour merges to form another colour.  It means that there is less of a need to mix colours prior to application, they mix on the canvas.  This was how I used to paint in watercolours and makes for some lovely, bright mixes.

My paintings have been rather difficult to photograph, but I decided to get the Canon SLR out and I am pleased to see that it picks up the texture much better.  You can just see on the first one, the top left corner has crumpled leaves as well as modeling paste text (from Rumi's Meditations).

I intend to use them together as they are to occupy a large wall space in a gym.  There will be more done to them before they are completed, so watch this space.  Will I be able to post another Fearless Friday or will it be a Failure Friday?

Stencil Sunday

One of my favourite ways to include mark-making is to use my own home-made stencils.  They remind me of screen-printing and I love how I can reuse them again and again.

I use a hot stylus to burn the design and as it is held like a pen or pencil, my own hand is evident in the finished stencil.

Today's new stencil is on the top left of this painting, the interlocking squares.  This is a negative image, the stencil blocks out the paint, whereas other stencils, like the chevron to the right of it, uses the positive image.

I am still working on the theme of boundaries, so all my stencils reflect that subject in some way and this design is based on field shapes.

Almost There!

Well, I thought I had finished this, but I hid it from myself for a while and then took a long, hard, critical look at it this morning.

I want to do a few more things to it (not much) and then call it done - it is on its way to the framers on Tuesday ready for exhibiting next month.