Hodge Podge

Before I started the class at Wet Paint, I pulled out the Neocolor IIs and started a piece the way I used to use them (small piece on its side and layering up color).  It didn’t get finished before class started.  When I  pulled it out to work on, I tried doing what we did in class last week on top (filling in color and activating it with water).  Last night, I decided to finish it and I scribbled, painted, or whatever.

One of the many things I love about the Neocolor IIs is their opacity, making it possible to try and fix things.  A lot of the time I find that my lights need to be lighter. For this one, I used the side of a white piece, plus some scribbles to make that happen.

The photo I used was from a trip I took in the fall. I didn’t know what flower was, but I liked the crazy center part.  Using Google Lens, I believe this is a Japanese anemone.

Back To It

Other than knitting, I have not felt the siren call to create.  Sure, it would whisper ever so slightly from time to time, but it's been easy to hurry past that.  Recently, it got louder and, at the same time, I found several classes that I wanted to take.  

The first class was a Valentine Card Workshop with Jane Davies.  I become aware of her through a friend I met at one of Kat Corrigan's classes.

Valentines and/or the well-known heart-shaped symbol was used as a way to explore collage, shapes, colors, patterns, and other parts of what Jane referred to as visual language.  The class was online.  While it was only 2 hours, she covered a lot.  Even better, it was fun!

For the next couple of days, I played around with making some different hearts, but didn't complete them.  When Valentines Day rolled around, I had only glued down and finished two of them.  That morning, I decided that I wanted to make more so I could hide them around the house for my partner to find.  I gave myself a set and short amount of time and buzzed through a bunch more.  They didn't have to be perfect.  They just needed to read as a heart and be vaguely interesting.  

It was a blast and I think my partner had fun stumbling across them throughout the day. 

I don't have a stack of "collage" paper, so I mostly used things cut out from magazines.  The polka dots came from a thank you card from a friend.  

Here's one I made for me to hang up in my drab cubicle.  While I don't spend much time there, I've slowly been adding things, even though it is a shared cubicle. 

The week after the Valentine workshop, I started a 3-week class at Wet Paint where each week we are copying one painting using Neocolor II crayons from Carn D'Ache.  I was interested in exploring different ways to use these and this class looked like a great way to do that.  It is also a remote class.  

Week 1 was copying from a Wayne Thiebaud painting using the Neocolor IIs and we were mostly coloring in / filling in areas of color and later activating them with water.  It was a fun way to play and practice.  One area where I would like to be more careful is when you put down the small bits of contrast or outline colors in this piece.  You really don't need much and I was a little heavy handed.  It also helps to be careful with your brush and amount of water and it would be good to work on that.  Even so, I can't help but smile when I look at this one.  

I learned a lot and will probably do a second version.  

Mostly Ephemeral

Right after I took the class at Wet Paint, I cut up different shapes and types of shapes from different types of paper, mostly items from the mail.  I’ve been taking out different “sets” of shapes and playing around with them.  

With the circles, I tried arranging them in different ways. For several things that seemed remotely interesting, I snapped a photo, because gluing these all down would have taken too much time.

I like this second version better.

Yesterday, I played around with some squiggly shapes and decided to glue those down.

I am enjoying this form of play. 

Ephemeral

This morning, I decided to test two different papers to see if they could handle watered down paint.  The answer was no.  After I painted them, but before they were fully dry and started to curl up, I took one page and started playing around with some cut up paper pieces I made. 

At some point in the mass of shapes, I went from looking at the relationship of the cut pieces to each other and became aware of the negative space in the blue between the shapes and grooving on that. 

I didn’t care that the blue and purple isn’t the greatest color exploration.  I wasn’t trying to complete anything, which is good because the paper has curled terribly and the pieces are loose and have shifted.  I just enjoyed starting my day this way and capturing this moment.

Back To Doing

I am back to doing or am slowly getting back to doing.  Doing what?  Something. Anything.  I don’t know.  At the core is a need to create and explore.  One thing I know is that doing leads to documenting.

Not long after finally creating something, I took a class at Wet Paint.  It was about self care and collage, so I’ve been playing around with shapes and not getting concerned about the results.  

I don’t even know what this is, but I created it.

This did not turn out initially or now, but I put it to good use and experimented.

Layer one was in Neocolor IIs (water soluble) used in the way I have used them in the past.  Since I didn’t like the result, I used a water brush, let that dry, and put more color on top with Neocolor Is (not water soluble).  I can see myself pushing this further and playing with this more.  

Current Direction

What have I been up to, creatively?  I’ve taken two classes at Wet Paint that were both quite good and interesting in their own way.  One was about haptic drawing.  I can’t say that I “get it”, but I want to both explore my mark making when drawing and also the mindfulness component of it.  The mark making comes from the realization that I mostly do not like the lines that I draw, so I want to explore mark making and expand my mark making vocabulary.  After this class, I thought I’d start a practice of doing several of these per week and thought it would be an easy way to keep up a creative habit during a time of being busy, but that’s not how it went.  

I also took a two session class with Monica Fogg about color.  I got some good food for thought from this class.  In applying that, we did some studies of a simple scene where the point was not the scene, to make anything pretty, or to finish anything at all.  The point was to explore the impact of color in a somewhat structured way.  The exercise is somewhat mechanical, but Monica said (and it makes a lot of sense to me) that continuing to explore this scene in different ways with the things she taught will help with making better, or perhaps more deliberate, choices down the road.  

Here’s one of the studies using complementary colors and with a muted/low chroma and a scarcity of some high chroma.  In class, everyone else was using watercolors, but I don’t have the experience with those, so I used Neocolor II crayons.

Throughout the month and after the 2nd class last week, I just got too busy and was too tired to do much creatively.  That’s mostly due to the demands of work and that should start to let up a bit in a couple of weeks.  This has also impacted my gardening, since I’ve got seeds to start where it should have been better to start them several weeks ago and I really do want to get lettuce planted outside. 

On Thursday night, I was so fried that I didn’t even feel like myself, which is a horrible way to feel.  I went down to my art corner in the basement and just played.  I did that again last night.  I started to play around with watercolor, which normally would have been a terrible idea since I really don’t know what I’m doing but instead I had fun and it did help to cleanse my brain. 

This morning, I went down to explore roundish things with watercolor.  The orange was first.  Next up was the apple.  The pear was last.  I should have quit before I started the pear, since I was getting tired and I think that shows.  It’s a challenging medium, but I had fun exploring.  

I need to use less water and I also need to use more patience!

For the next several weeks, I think I want to work on some more color schemes and also to play with watercolor.  Maybe, I’ll also try to do several haptic drawings. 

Keeping Up The Habit

I have been creating, but have not had much time for posting.  Here are two recent paintings for Art 4 Shelter.  For the second one, normally I would take another picture and crop it better, since the picture I took was very crooked but I don’t have time.

Here is another one that I started.  It’s a little wacky, but I keep finding myself wanting to look at it.  I’m thinking that I should continue to push things like this and see where it takes me.  I wish painting class was still going on, so I could get some feedback about it.  I will do a background, but I’m going to wait a day or two.