Under Pressure

I had this idea while I was drifting off to sleep last night. This is sketched out while the kids were eating breakfast this morning. I'm calling it "Under Pressure" and it's a study for a mixed media piece I'm going to do. I used water soluble oil pastels over pencil. I have a couple of variations in mind--if any turn out, I'll try to post them.

The Art Cave

Since I haven't posted in awhile, I thought I might treat you ;) to a few pictures of my art cave. Consider it a work in progress. Yes, it's an unbelievable mess, but I swear that if you had seen it just a few weeks ago, you would be impressed with how orderly it is now. You can actually walk the length of it without tripping over something.

I call it my art cave because it's in the basement, and frankly, the lighting sucks. My art supplies are in random boxes, some labelled, some not. On the bright side, I did organize all my art magazines so that they are little bit easier to find. Also, my awesome husband bought me a wood board to make a new work table--I'm using two old bathroom drawer units as the base--like the rest of the art cave, it's a work in progress.

My kids also have some of their art supplies down here, although, at this point, I don't allow them to work down here--they are just a bit too young and I have supplies better left for mature hands.  Since most of the rest of the basement serves as storage space, the biggest challenge is to keep that junk out of my space.

I have big plans ahead for how I ultimately want this room to look. Some paint, some lighting, a bit more structural organization and it will be a real studio. Considering how limited in space we were in our last house, I'm feeling pretty lucky I have this much room to work with, even if it is in a "cave."

Monday Craft Project: Felt Crown

I've been meaning to make a felt crown for my son ever since I made one for my niece. He asked for his to be a pirate crown, so here we are.

Felt is a very easy material to work with, and, if you are just getting into sewing, it's an ideal fabric. It doesn't fray, it runs through a sewing machine easily, and it's very forgiving. All wool felt is very expensive, so unless it's a project where I specifically need 100% wool, I either used a blend or use synthetic (especially for projects that the kids might end up trashing). For the crown, I also used a little bit of elastic for a better fit and room to grow.

So here's my pirate king thinking up his next dastardly plan.

A Look into My Journal

I never really used art journals until 2007, a year after my first child was born.  At the time, it was a way to try to bring art back in my life.  An entire year had passed without me doing anything more creative than paint my baby's bedroom. I used it to sketch and practice, tape inspirational work, write (vent), and keep track of ideas I wanted to try but didn't have time to focus on immediately.  I'm now on to my second journal.  The biggest benefit for me is that I can use the journal to brainstorm projects before I get to them--especially since I have limited time.  I will usually draw a box to represent the "canvas" and create the layout or a quick thumbnail sketch of what I want to do.  I've included a page from my current journal, along with a current work in progress so that you can see how I use it. 

Drawing Exercise

Many months ago I purchased Carla Sonheim's  Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun.  It's filled with some excellent ideas for improving your drawing skills and useful if you need to get past a creative block.  It's organized as a series of exercises, many of them fairly short in duration.  I started one of the exercises when I purchased the book, but never got around to finishing it.  Today I went ahead and finished the painting/drawing because I wanted to use some new watercolor pencils I purchased last weekend.  Here is the result.  I like that the exercise freed up the movement in my drawing, as I have a tendency to draw animals in the same position.  What I don't like is that it's obviously off as far as perspective--part of the nature of the exercise, as I tried to stay as close to the watercolor washes as possible.  

Finished Watercolor Butterflies

So here are the finished butterflies.  On the right side are two of the original watercolors prior to adding water pencil.  The images on the left are the finished butterflies with the pencilwork complete.  I used water soluable pencils and then lightly went over the lines with a wet brush.

While I can certainly use more practice, I am happy with how these images turned out.  Now I need to figure out how I will use them in my collage work.

Saving My Progress

This is just a quick post so I can share my current work in progress.  My first art love was pen and ink; my second, watercolor, mostly because I wanted to color in my pen and ink.  I have enough love to go around for anything creative, but, when I painted these, I realized just how relaxing it was to come back to watercolors.  I am doing something different.  Instead of inking it, I plan on using a combination of watercolor pencil and regular colored pencil to finish these butterflies off.

Because there's always the chance I might ruin my art at a stage where I like it, especially when changing mediums, I try to take a scan of my project before I proceed.  I may mess up the original, but scanning at least gives me a chance to have a partial do over since I can print just about anything out on my large format printer.  This mentally frees me to experiment and reduces the number of half finished projects I have laying around.  Plus, its a good way to document my progress.

I'll post the finished art if it turns out successfully.