Showing posts with label imagination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imagination. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

New Directions Extreme Composition 1

During the 30 x 30 challenge this past September I was impressed by the work of one artist, Dotty Seiter that caught my eye at first because she was working in  B&W. I also was working mainly in charcoal and gray and white pastels. I was impressed with the works she was doing following an online course by Jane Davies,  She was doing the 100 drawings on the bottom of the page.
Following Dotty each day and seeing how her work was developing I decided that I should try one of the courses. This is my new direction. October is a month of holidays and we will only have 2 workshops so I decided to JUMP in.

Lesson 1 Lines and Dancing Lines

These are all just experiments!!!! I am really mainly posting for myself to see my own development in this course.

Did a test sheet of various lines with pencils,markers, pens, charcoal, and crayons to see their marks.
Then we were to do exercises with what Jane calls the wandering line. Letting the line go where it wants, rather intuitively.  Then add another line to compliment or go along with the first, Jane calls this a dancing line.  I many but wasn't getting really what I wanted. Need much more practice
I have a large 11 x 14 " sketchbook with fairly good quality paper. 

click to enlarge

Black oil pastel and lt brown conte stick.  My observation is that it's much too busy. 

click to enlarge

This was done first with a watercolor graphite pencil and then the conte stick... photo came out too faint, but you can get the idea.  The stains are from a work on the next page. This page probably was wet when I closed the book. I like this one much better. 


click to enlarge

We were to make backgrounds with low contrast colors and do the dancing lines on them.
Background oil/wax crayons with some medium. The lines were charcoal stick and 2B graphite pencil.

 Jane works in acrylic paints. I mainly work in oils so I did experiments with my wax/oil crayons and watercolor crayons with medium and without. Not good on plain paper so did a few on heavy brown paper and pieces of cut canvas, 

click to enlarge

Top strip is watercolor crayons with water added on heavy brown paper.
Bottom strip  using my oil/wax neocolor I crayons by Caran D'Ache. with added medium of  linseed oil and turps. Like the watercolor crayons best. I have cut sheets and will do some more. 
The cut canvas trials did not work out too well. I hope to open my paints and do them again,







Sunday, July 5, 2015

# 69 Mish Mash Mesh

# 69 Mish Mash Mesh

Sometimes the potatoes, apples, oranges and wood are wrapped in this plastic mesh like fabric.  Collected a few pieces and decided to see if I could stencil trough them with oils.  This is the result.  Muted colors with added charcoal markings.  Oils & cold wax on gessoed cardboard.

Oils & Cold Wax
11 x 14.5 "
Gessoed cardboard



Saturday, July 4, 2015

# 68 Small Abstract

# 68 Small Abstract

I really don't know what title to give these small experimental abstracts.  Aside color I am also experimenting with size of format.   I am not really comfortable with such a small format. Find it restricting.

Oils & Cold Wax
5 x 7 "
canvas

The colors for this piece were inspired by Rolina's blog. She is picking 3 colors to work with each week. 



Saturday, June 27, 2015

# 67 Abstract Trees

# 67 Abstract Trees

When I saw this reference on WDE  I immediately recalled an exercise in the book Painting Abstracts by Rolina van Vliet . Didn't exactly follow the exercise exactly but the patterns of the trees caught my fancy.
I cropped the image and made a charcoal sketch and then painted . Heleni stopped me from adding any more layers..

Charcoal Sketch
35 x 35 cm
gessoed cardboard

Oils & Cold Wax
35 x 35 cm
gessoed cardboard

Face in trunk a pure accident!!!


Friday, June 26, 2015

# 66 Poppies Peeking

# 66 Poppies Peeking

Our garden is nothing to speak about but early spring our yards are filled with wild poppies. This photo taken 2012.  We didn't have many in the front this year but on the sides and back were many.  This little group was taken behind some Hollyhock foliage.

Oils & Cold Wax
40 x 35 cm
Gessoed Cardboard

Thursday, June 25, 2015

# 65 Fantasy Landscape

# 65 Fantasy Landscape

Actually I really don't know what title to give this painting so Fantasy Landscape may be as good as any other. In this new direction of working  more abstractly, even realistic paintings are abstract, leaning new techniques and new materials I feel I am in some new "fantasy" world. A scary,intriguing and exciting place.
Who knows where this journey will take me.

This started out as as charcoal sketch on gessoed cardboard. I have started to roughly sketch interesting compositions in simple shapes and tones and this developed from one of those small sketches. Unfortunately I didn't jot down the reference I used.


Charcoal Sketch
34.5 x 44.5
gessoed cardboard

Oils & Cold Wax
34.5 x 44.5
gessoed cardboard




Sunday, June 14, 2015

# 63 Small Abstract

# 63 Small Abstract

I have lots of strips of canvas from my workshop artist Traudi (a few of her works).  I so wish she would go online her abstract  work is a constant inspiration . Cut one strip into about 5 small pieces for 5 x 7 " paintings/sketches. Good way to test out some ideas and techniques.  Kind of difficult to use the palette knife on such a small format but that's part of the learning game!!!

Oils & Cold Wax
5 x 7 " canvas


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Experimental Stuff WIP

A while back Heleni suggested a challenge working with a partner and adopting something about their work and using it in our own creation.  My creation was supposed to be from the wonderful backgrounds Traudi does which I hadn't really captured.

So I decided to get help and brought 2 cloth covered panels plus gouache paints, the kind that children use, to class and Traudi showed me how to achieve the various patterns... She takes a sheet of paper ,I had plain brown paper, and she squishes out the colors, usually 2 hues, and randomly prints with these colors on the canvas....

I am doing "my " thing with them... and am also using the sheets of paper as well... these are WIP...there is a lot to explore in these methods... making use of the shapes for you imagination....

 40 x 60 cm

 40 x 60 cm

Traudi uses markers and cut torn colored paper for her creations....I am using drawing tools like charcoal and oil pastels....

Here is  the work Traudi did on the challenge... she adopted my use of children in some of my paintings.