quirkyartist

Entries tagged as ‘collage’

Australian Botanicals

December 20, 2009 · 1 Comment

I did another drawing of a small section of my beautiful gum flowers using a red gel pen, then enhancing with a bit of watercolour. The following day I was at work, so quickly in the lunchtime I picked this little piece of foliage and sat at my desk and drew that with a sanguine Pigma Micron and some watercolour. Instead of doing more drawings, I decided to collage on some beautiful handmade paper by Christine Ballinger, that has paper faux gum leaves embedded in it – too lazy to do two more drawings to complete the spread. I used rubber stamps for the ‘in a botanical phase’ text, and shadowed with a tombow pen, as it wasn’t strong enough in colour.

Categories: Sketching · collage · drawing · journal · watercolour
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41 degrees

November 29, 2009 · 1 Comment

It was 41 degrees last Sunday and I have no air-con, just a fan. I decided to do some drawings of my poor woolly cats, however even though they were lethargic, they were not co-operating. I decided to test my new metallic screen print inks where the non-drawings were and it just went from there.

The paper towel is from when I was testing some Peerless colours in the morning, and I was listening to a man who is an Extreme Knitter on the radio. He was saying some things about art that I agreed with, so I wrote them down too. I had started with a pale green acrylic wash, but the page only really came together when I filled in the sepia shadows with ink. This page is not really ‘what I want to do’. I want to draw. But it was so hot I couldn’t concentrate and maybe I broke another barrier with working some supplies testing into a page

Categories: Sketching · collage · drawing · journal
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In my courtyard – journal challenge.

September 17, 2009 · 2 Comments

good_weekendThis was Saturday’s effort for the journalling challenge. I was uninspired, but for the first time it was warm enough to sit outside. My courtyard is going to be completely redone, so it’s a mess at the moment, except for the geraniums. A little bit of collage on this page, from the magazine that comes with the Saturday paper. Gesso, Artline pen, Peerless watercolours, water soluble oil pastels.

I had a browse through one of my other journalling books -1,000 Artist Journal Pages: Personal Pages and Inspirations (1000 Series) not many with drawing, but some people are amazingly inventive.  I came across the work of Amanda Kavanagh who is also in Danny Gregory’s book  An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers too. I must say I like EVERYTHING she does. A quite different one I like because it’s really different and inventive is Judy Watt’s work.

Categories: Sketching · collage · drawing · journal · pen and wash · watercolour
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Journalling Challenge

September 14, 2009 · 1 Comment

journal_1I am confused about journalling. What is it? Journalling is not a word we use in Australia, however I have a number of books about ‘journalling’ or ‘art journals’ that I got for inspiration & techniques for my artists books. Some of these books are really excellent, particularly this one  of Lynne Perella,  Artists’ Journals and Sketchbooks: Exploring and Creating Personal Pages which is worth buying for the page on image transfers alone. Her other one is pretty jolly good too  – Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists (Quarry Book) – it’s more a catalogue of lovely artists books/art journals by various artists, but with a showcase of unusual and interesting techniques.

What sparked this, is that I recently bought a book by another author, True Vision: Authentic Art Journaling which has similar techniques. Not that I mean they overlap, more that I mean they are collage, layering, other art techniques. These are just two of the authors that I have, but they ALL use these collage/layering techniques and I just don’t get how they’re a JOURNAL. Perhaps in some cases they may be a journal in the sense that the artist is sharing their innermost thoughts with the book.  Where I don’t see them as a journal is that the layers are very time consuming, so the ‘daily’ aspect of a journal must be missing except for the fact that, yes, you could work on them daily, but not finish a spread daily. And there is very little drawing.

Through an on-line art mailing list, I came across another artist in the USA who also remains ambivalent about journalling. We have a challenge to ‘journal’ every 2nd day in September. This is my first spread. I’m re-using a book about dreams, which is why I started with a dream I had.

My aim is to DRAW in every journal spread, but to use some of the techniques from my myriad of books to create an integrated page spread.

Categories: Sketching · books · collage · drawing · journal · watercolour pencils
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Cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums

July 22, 2009 · 4 Comments

bread_wineI started this painting some time ago. We decided to make a project sheet for doing a cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums. I’d painted this cubist painting at the Easter Show, so I had to do another one so that we could photograph it step by step. Here’s how this painting started out. I got sidetracked by all the watercolour pencil drawings I was doing for Kate Johnston’s Watercolour Pencil Class. Finally it got done now, and the project worksheet won’t be long.

Categories: Matisse Derivan · acrylics · collage · painting
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New Dry Medium painting at the Easter Show

April 21, 2009 · 8 Comments

breakfast_coffeeOn Sunday I was demonstrating on the Matisse Derivan stand at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. I painted this new Cubist painting with the new Dry Mediums. I got this idea from a Cubist painting of a coffee pot in a great book I have called 200 Projects to Strengthen Your Art Skills: For Aspiring Art Students (Aspire) It is a great book with so many unusual ideas in it, and I particularly love the colours.  So, though you can’t see in this small image, I collaged the canvas with torn strips of the Sydney Morning Herald, then painted over them with Matisse Matt Gel Medium MM30 and a little Yellow Oxide to strengthen the newsprint.  Then I did the drawing (from some thumbnails I’d done in my sketchbook.  After that I put on the dry mediums. The pot and coffee cup are mostly the different grades of sand, the pumice and the mica flakes. In the background I made thin cube -like shapes, some  from Microspheres and  some from Wollastonite. These are relatively transparent and allowed the text on the newsprint to show through. Then I painted it at the show.

Categories: Matisse Derivan · acrylics · books · collage · painting
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