#paintwithmechallenge

Photo by Dmitry Zvolskiy on Pexels

Easy

Easy

Consider how the wildflowers grow.

20/20 Visionaries Oracle Card

Pencil Crayon on Gelli Print

Adding to My Village

Yesterday I carved another house - soon I'll have a village!  This house was also inspired by a photo from our 2005 trip to the Loire valley in France:

Abbey-de-Fontrevaud-near-Saumur

20/20 Visionaries Oracle Cards

SPRING

There is new life ahead.

"The 20/20 Visionaries Oracle Deck is a collaborative project started in the year 2020. Artists and friends are invited to create 3x5 cards to be part of an ever-growing deck of oracle cards to be for self-discovery, goal setting and personal inspiration."

This project was started by the coordinator of our local Artist Trading Card Group. This is my first card.

Roses

My husband bought me some beautiful pastel roses for Valentine's Day.  Since then, they have inspired a few journal pages!

Water Lilies

Really it was just an excuse to play with masking fluid.  The reference photos were by Wendy Sinclair on the Facebook Group Free Reference Photos for Artists.

There Are No Words...

...to espresso how much you mean to me!

Happy Valentines Day

Stamp Carving Process

This is the photo that inspired the stamp I carved recently.  

I took a few pictures as I went through the process of carving, more to document the process for myself than anything else.  The inspiration photo is the first step in the process.

I did a sketch from the photo, traced it onto tracing paper using a soft pencil, turned the tracing over and burnished it onto a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" piece of carving rubber.

I never quite know which pieces are going to get carved away when I have an idea like this, so it helps to stop and think about it a bit before I start carving.  (I can't change my mind once something is cut!)  If it is at all complicated I shade the parts I'm leaving behind, and you can see this in the first photo below, along with the first cut I made around the outside of the "house".  The first cuts are made with the smallest "V" blade (#1):

Next, I cut on the inside of the large blocks on the house I would be carving away.  (Note there is a cut on the inside of the outline of the house but not on the roof and chimney, for example.)  I did the same inside and outside process on the windows:

I then carved away the house with a large "U" blade (#5):

Now we switch our focus to the area around the house.  Using a medium "U" blade (#3), I carve a moat around most of the image.  There is just a small part at the top where this wouldn't work:

I decided to put a border around the whole block rather than just cutting around the outside of the house.  Using the #1 blade I carve outwards from the small areas first (like the area to the right of the chimney).  The rest is done with the #5 blade in a similar fashion.  I just scoop the rubber stopping about 1/16" from the edge to form the border:

Now we're ready for the first printing, which I do with a medium shade of ink so that it doesn't cover up the shading on the rubber that I did at the beginning.

The rest is all clean-up, a process alternating between using the #1 blade to clean up more details and more test prints.  It took another 3 test prints before I got to the finished image I was happy with.  It isn't perfect, by any means, but that is part of the charm of hand carved stamps.

Here's the final stamp:

I Had a Bath in a Castle

In 2005, on a trip through the Loire Valley, my husband and I stayed at a chateau that had been converted to an inn.  I used a photo of it to inspire this new handcarved stamp.  

Here, I stamped it on a gelli print and put it into my journal, but I'm sure it will make it onto artist trading cards at some point too!

Carnations

Bookmark, watercolor

This was done wet on wet with a fan brush, one of my favorite brushes to have fun with!  After it was dry I added a second layer.

Reflections

I participated in a PaintWithMe Challenge in January and then forgot to share the results.  The organizer, Susan Chang, suggested we all paint from the same photo by Debbie Ellingwood from a Facebook Group where photographers share their photos for artists to paint from.  

I had so much fun I painted it twice.  The one below is actually my first attempt.

Honey, I Shrank the Car!

a bad drawing of a good photo by @itfeelslikefilm on unsplash.com