more 365/3

This week's endeavors continue around my two challenges - #28patterns with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and my work for Jane Davies' class.  One is mindless fun, the other is thoughtful, challenging fun.

#49- 50 - patterning for a few days..... all made with my usual 4x6 index card, micron pens and inktense watercolor pencils.

#51 - 56  classwork for 100 drawings on cheap paper.  This week's lesson scaled back and had us focus on creating monochromatic pieces with minimal variety (the exact opposite of last week's). Once again I had fun playing with the bright colors I love and learning so much! thanks Jane!

Some of the papers - stage one!

It was challenging to make these interesting in their subtlety. Some of the detail isn't showing up through the scan, but it's pretty close.  I made lots more of the red/orange/pink ones, a few more yellows and a couple of the beige/sand ones - the red palette was my fave -the color seemed to glow and was so rich.

pinterest love: birds & feathers

Sharing more of my Pinterest pins - this week from my "birds and feathers" board.  It's a motif I love and keep planning to incorporate more of so check it out for some inspiration.



Collage bird by Animal House Art, ETSY



Love these loose feathers (watercolor?) - no link info

  found on My Revelment which isn't much help, but I love the variety of fills and soft colors - could be a cool repeating pattern.




Here's a happy journal page (and good advice in the text)! By Birgit Koopsen - looks like a generous use of stamping, stenciling, maybe some gelli plate pieces, collage, etc. Fun page.

  By Lisa Lamoreaux, a Renton, WA artist but her blogs appear to be shut down now.  You can google her name and see some other examples of her work.

  Here's an inspiring bird to mimic...all those polka dots! - it's a Northern Flicker.  (it was hard not to type Flickr - amazing how these sites get into our lexicon!)

  Great command of watercolor blending! By John Ichter


Fun idea to draw/paint/doodle on a piece of ephemera.

  No artist info - love the use of doodles to make very interpretive feathers.

If you recognize any of my unidentified artist pieces, let me know and I'll update the post.  Do you have some favorite bird pins that you look to for inspiration?

wordless wednesday: water

Inspired by Carlene Taylor Simmons

365 /3 last week

My 365/3 (year 3 of 365 stuff) project continues with my pattern play with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and my class work in the Jane Davies 100 Drawings on Cheap Paper class.  Not time for much else.....

This week's classwork was to use maximum variety in creating 10 drawings with no regard for composition, unity, balance, etc. just variety of line, color, shape.

The other criteria, maybe the hardest, was to make each quadrant of each drawing different from each other.....as different as possible, remembering the point is to achieve maximum variety - variety of line (angular, organic, thick, thin, etc), variety of color/value, soft/hard edges, variety of shapes - actual and implied, variety of technique - layers, stamps, stencils, markers, graphite, paint, oil pastels, or whatever mark making tools are available. Whew - quite a challenge!

I whipped out the first layers on about 16 pieces - just painted for fun, randomly, without much thought.....just getting some color down. Dan came into the room at this point and said it looked like a kindergarten project!  I said, "good" because I was channeling my inner child :)

Then I went back through each adding layers of transparent or opaque paint here and there and sometimes some patterning with stencils. I put it away overnight and went back to them the next day with a more mindful approach and looking to add variety by using contrast - contrast line edges (sharp and rough or broken), using stencils or stamps and a wide range of mark making tools.

Here's an example of a before and after - my "kindergarten" beginning and my varied ending.

Having a fabulous, creative week!

wordless wednesday: