The Colourguru

a little piece of art

Connie from Paper Traders is running an 'Emotive Faces' swap and seeing as faces have been such a big part of my drawing journey of the last 12 months - I just HAD to join in.  This girl is one that I am just always enthralled with.  She has such a peaceful, langid look on her face, but it's still pensive.  For me (personally) she has all of the intrigue that comes with the Mona Lisa.  I have made 5 originals of her, (in reverse, because of how I made it) I started, by drawing the pic on to lino & then carving it out & making lino prints, hand burnishing ink onto the watercolour paper with a spoon. (this made the image in reverse to the original)
I then used pencils, chalks, watercolour paint & ink to work in the colours. Being originals, each one is different, but I only scanned one of them.

In Art Theory at the moment, we are studying Baroque artists, & Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

this one is a totally different style - but Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia has amazing detail in her clothing, which I find enchanting.

 

Progress at College

This week at Collage we have moved on to watercolour classes with the AMAZING Australian artist THORNTON WALKER - WOW - really great stuff - THIS was my fav (it looked like a stylized 'colour chart' - so OF COURSE it was my fav!) - but IT was hard to choose!  So much of his subject matter really appealled to me - still lifes that include china & fruit & interesting bits'n'bobs......the dissapointing part was that our first week was him 'introducing' us to inks - which he uses in conjunction with watercolours - obviously he wasn't aware that we had been working with them for 4 weeks previously.  The exercise was to sit opposite in pairs & draw each other using bamboo 'pens' (made from a sharpened piece of bamboo).  After several goes at this, I lost the plot a little and wandered over to something familiar.

I have finally completed my first lino cut in printmaking, which I have hand burnished out on to some old newsprint - it's a kind of play on some of my photographs of Melbourne cityscapes, and includes of some 'John Brack Collins St' people (down the bottom).  Lino cuts are quite fun to do (if you can move your arm that is!) - Lino is much more stable than the rubber (my earlier carving experiences), although it is difficult to get a 'positive' carving as it is a thin surface (about 1/4 inch), so to carve it all completely away, it is tricky to get it away (you often end up with striations) and so many are done in the negative.

More Pen & Ink

Most of what I do at Uni is hardly worth a mention, while there is lots of it, it is mostly big in scale (we usually work on A1 size cartridge, or bulky news, depending on the subject), which makes it difficult to scan or photograph, & it is often just 'exercises' and practising in various mediums.  We have come to the end of our 'pen & ink' workshops & the work was mostly done on a smaller scale, so I have scanned some to post.  I did a copy of a seahorse I did last year, in watercolour, as I thought the tonal variation leant itself to this medium.  Of course the scan doesn't show it up, but I have used irridescent & silver inks, which give this little critter a 'slippery' fish look & makes the water glisten.  The page of 'forest floor' bits is a pretty dodgy scan, & of course much of the detail is lost...& the last two are the front & back cover of a little 'Zutter' book I did of ATC sized 'tree studies' at various times of the day.  'The Most Significant Tree' appears in the puddling ink, so after it dried, I emphasised it in the composition.

The House of Dying

Moving on from all of the 'metallness' I wus telling you about in the last post - now my house kinda looks like a Chinese laundry!!!!  I am doing a whole lot of dying, packaging up beautiful threads, embroideries & fabrics in preparation for a fabulous Creative Soul retreat.  My classes are with Stephanie Lee & DJ Pettitt, which I am JUST ACHING for - Bernie Berlin is also going to be there spreading her cleverness to everything she touches!  It's only three weeks away now, I booked in SUCH a long time ago, and finally it is here.  My hubbie is EXTREMELY easy going to put up with this - there is hardly a surface that doesn't have a bowl on it with dye in it, or things being laid out to cut up - or some other mess!  There are some benefits to having a messy husband - at the times when you are happy to have things messy - he's cool and it doesn't worry him.  I found out a long time ago, as long as it doesn't disrupt eating or sleeping - he doesn't care what I'm doing!  LOL!!!

Have I lost the PLOT???

  I know that I haven't been posting much art - and I am sorry about that -there's been lots on and preps for various things - and yada, yada, yada, you get it....busy - these pages are something I did in Teri's RR journal about Doors & Windows - the quote reads 'A house without books is like a room without windows.  No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books.  If he has the means to buy them' (Horace Mann)  I LOVE this quote - and having confessed to you once before about my love of books, you will understand that I wholeheARTedly agree with Horace Dear!    At Paper Traders we have had an altered Domino swap - & I created these treasures - I made some extras and they will be for sale in my Etsy shop.......once I photograph them & post them.  The back is decorated vintage Paris scenes, the front has lock plate attached with vintage brass screws.  The text reads, 'A door is adorned with the colours of the lives that have passed through it' The pieces are quite textural, like an old painted door that has coat after coat as various occupants have moved in & out of the residence.

Handcut Rubber

As I said yesterday - I worked on creating some of my own hand carved stamps.  After a few nicks & cuts - in my fingers I mean! - I am happy with the outcome & I hope to use these as both background & feature stamps in time.  It's a very tactile experience & I find it really fun to do - have a go - it's not that hard.  I used historic ornament books to create these designs - with some inspiration from the amazing Michelle Ward from Green Pepper Press & her 'Street Crusade No: 18'.  Still drawing - practice, practice, practice!  Challenge No: 7 was to draw a jar or a bottle from the kitchen - so there it is - one of my fav. jams. (jelly)  The next (catch up challenge) is to draw a piece of jewellery & I am working on drawing my Nan's engagement ring.  It is proving more difficult than I first imagined, but I hope to have it finished soon.

In the Kitchen

Well, it's been a weekend in the kitchen.........nothing like impending visitors to motivate hubby to do some stuff around the house......which is a lovely thing, 'cos when you do it for everyone else all week, you just don't want to come home & do it......it's a theory I TOTALLY understand, but it doesn't make it easier to live with!!!!.....SOOOOO.......this weekend he has tiled my kitchen & fitted my new cooktop..........YAY.......I celebrated - cooking up a storm!!!  Of dyed ribbon of course.........????? (did you think I meant FOOD?????   No, I needed the ribbon more!   LOL!!!)   

As I have been a bit incapacitated lately, many of my 365 pics this month have been taken around home, but yesterday after work I came across a 'Men in Black' 

& then had the opportunity to visit a friends garden & was thrilled with what I came across............ 

 

Love Tokens

These gorgeous little hearts are made on thick chipboard for a swap I am hosting at Paper Traders.  It was fun to create such a cute little piece of whimsy - I have had these rub on's with the hearts from 7 gypsies for ages - I knew eventually I'd find a place I really liked them. I have also used Basic Grey rub ons & papers, images & old music. 

A little Miscellany

I spent most of the evening last night painting backgrounds.  Lots to paint, painting, painting painting....... I have a lot on right now & some time lines are creeping up on me. I 'holed' up in my studio (a delicious place to be if there was a world war!  Actually, there isn't anything to eat or drink, just thing to do & lovely things to play with so perhaps it isn't the best place!  LOL!) I was painting, painting, emailing, painting, dancing, painting, painting, spilling paint, dancing, emailing, more painting......... I had all different shaped painted pieces standing up like soldiers all around my studio.......there were covers for my Gypsy Journal, arches (big & small); an 8 x 10 canvas for a calendar page for Paper Whimsy; some 4 x 4's & these.  These pieces were supposed to be collaborative 'gifts' that a number of artists & myself were putting together as a thank you to some one.......  waiting for paint to dry on one side of something....... I stamped a bit on one of these & liked how it looked.....then I waxed a bit & thought ooooo a little Paper Whimsey girl would look nice on here....then I painted, & glued, & embossed & loved them into existence.......I looked up & realized, OH NO, I was only supposed to make backgrounds...........and it was 2.30 in the morning!!!!!!!  I had been kidnapped & mezmarized by my muse & time did not exist.

cARTalog project

These pieces of mixed media collage are created from old library indexing cards. The library cards are from the University of Iowa Libraries’ main card catalog, which was retired in 2004. A small community of library staff—motivated by both nostalgia and library subculture-- has come together to give the card catalog cards themselves a rebirth, to celebrate the significance of them in library history. Other libraries have also done the same. The project is titled cARTalog project & involves the recycling of the indexing cards into 'another life'.
I have titled my creations commencing top left: Town Planning; unaltered manilla card, In Two Minds, Field Notes; A Heart to Create, Cultural Exchange (it was not a requirement, however, I have used the subject of the card as a spring board for my designs)
cARTalog hopes to find as many creative uses as possible for the salvaged card catalog cards and generate a sense of community among those who love the card catalog. Participants include: librarians, artists (sculpture, mail art, book art, calligraphers, photographers)
educators & students (K-12, college, graduate level), musicians, chefs, historians & story tellers

If you are interested in the project, you can read more about it here:
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/pr/cartalog/home.htm I believe that all of the cards have been distributed.