Merry Christmas, Everyone!

 

Memories of Winters in Palm Springs

 

We're not in Palm Springs this year, but during Vancouver's current cold snap, I have been fondly remembering our Christmases there. 

Silver Boughs

 

I've never had a silver Christmas tree, but some people do enjoy them!

Christmas Cards

 

I've been playing around with Christmas cards lately.  I say "playing around" because I've been experimenting with designs.

These two  in pots came from a Cee Cee Creations YouTube video.

This next one is my favorite so far; I made a few of these.

Watercolour Sketchbooks Made Simple BOTANICALS

 

I started a new class with Life I Design called Watercolour Sketchbooks Made Simple BOTANICALS. I'm using my Paul Rubens landscape watercolour sketchbook - 8" x 5.5". 

Lesson One was Payne's Grey Florals.  A monochrome spread is perfect for days when I don't want to think too much but want to slop paint around.

Lesson Two was Loose Dried Florals.   I added some Neocolor crayons to the watercolour.  I often pick up things on my walk to capture in my sketchbook.

Next we painted leaves, mixing our own greens, some of them right on the page.  This time we sketched our leaves first; I used some watercolour pencils here too.

I'm having fun so far, and that's the main thing, right?

Painting With Joy

 

After a brief summer hiatus, Painting With Joy is back.  It proved to be what I needed to end my own hiatus!

We painted Van Gogh's sunflowers yesterday, and I really enjoyed it.  I used watercolor, Neocolor crayons and watercolor pencils in my 9 x 9 Leuchtturm1917 sketchbook.

Sketching in the Garden

I did this sketch back in June and found it today.  Much of the summer was too hot for me and I didn't do much drawing or painting at all.  Reading was my summertime pastime this year.

The Art of the Travel Journal - Book Review

 

Now that COVID travel restrictions are lifted, people are enthusiastically embracing travel once again..  Although travel isn't in my near future, I love any books about journaling, so I jumped at the offer from NetGalley to review an electronic version of this book.

The test with any art-related book for me is:  Does this book inspire me to get out the supplies and dive in?  This book certainly passed the test, and as the author Abbey Sy promised, this kind of journaling is easily transferable to my life at home.  It has given my journaling habit a much-needed kick start.  The guest artist section soon had me discovering new artists to follow on social media. 

If you are new to journaling,  this book has everything you need no matter what format/style you want to try. The book covers art heavy, text heavy, photo heavy, and collage heavy formats, and if you can't decide, try the author's favorite, the ultimate combination! 

The end of the book still needs a few edits to be ready for final publication, in my opinion.  Although promised in the introduction to Chapter 6 Honing Your Habit, I couldn't find the tips on storing journals.  (I was really looking forward to those tips, too!)  Chapter 7 The Guest Artist features some terrific journalers, but the section on Resources is disappointing, and two of three website links are wrong or no longer in service. 

All in all, this is a terrific book despite the weak ending - 4 out of 5 stars!

Miss Fiona

 

You can find the inspiration photo by @mozarts_ride here.  Carey reposted his photo for St. Patrick's Day and I learned something new about the feast day reading it.  

Miss Isabel

 

You can find the details for Miss Isabel, along with the inspiration photo by @mozarts_ride here.  In his Instagram post, Carey goes for a trip down memory lane remembering one of my favorite bands - ZZ Top.

Playing With Inktense Blocks

Years ago my sister bought me a set of 72 Inktense Blocks for Christmas.  (What a lucky girl I am!)  I've been using them lately as a massive set of pan paints to paint truck drawings.  I've been using my Paul Rubens Hot Press Watercolor sketchbook which is lovely to draw and paint in.  It's another more recent gift from Dianne.  She's queen of (the) Amazon.

When One Thing Leads to Another

You have a set!

Hawaiian Ginger

Aloha!

My sister challenged me to make a card from this stamp of a ginger flower.  She also suggested that I include the dots that I used on the previous cards.  I'm thankful for this suggestion; I was thinking it was going to be a little bare but I had no ideas about what to add.  

I used chalk inks for these - on both I used olive for the leaves and stem.  On the the top card I used rouge for the flower, and on the bottom one, wisteria.

Creativity and Making Choices

 

It is much easier for me to start the creative process if I begin by limiting my choices.  I wanted to make some "guy cards" - what we cardmakers call cards suitable for men and boys.  It has been awhile since I printed some trucks, but with my huge selection of wonky drawings, how did I choose which to print?

I have a file which has a few folded cards all ready cut and folded, so I dipped into that and found two brown cards that have been there for far too long.  That limited my choice of trucks by color - perfect.  The card below is going to my nephew for his birthday, and the one above will go in the box for when I need a card quickly. 

 

Feeling Blue

Cardmaking

Getting Inky

Matisse - Vase of Amaryllis, 1941

 

I'm almost finished my Traveler's Notebook journal.  There might be room for one more Matisse!

Les Coucous Tapis Bleu et Rose, 1911

 

I moved from my largest to my smallest sketchbook with this Matisse.  (This is in my Traveler's Notebook.) 

Les Tulippes

 

I'm still enjoying painting with Matisse, although here I changed the composition slightly from the original.  I also replaced oil pastels with watercolor crayons; I don't like the transfer of the oil pastels to the adjacent page when the book is closed.  This one is in my A4 Royal Talens sketchbook. 

Painting with Matisse

 

I'm doing these Matisse copies in every sketchbook I have going.  (The Goldfish is in my A4 Royal Talens.)

I'm especially enjoying replicating Matisse's use of patterns, in my own way of course; I could never accurately reproduce Matisse.

Painting With Joy (and Matisse)

 

At Sketchbook Revival this year I was introduced to a wonderful artist Joy Ting Charde (@joycharde).  I am taking a Creativebug Daily Practice she offers and have attended one of her "Paint With Joy" Zoom sessions.

On Zoom, we drew and painted works by Matisse.  Joy is very loose and fun and I love that she uses multiple mediums - watercolor, oil pastel, watercolor pencils and pencil crayons.

Our homework assignment is to paint more Matisse works...more to come. 😀 

Palette Cleanse

 

I cleaned out my watercolor palette by making circle shapes in my sketchbook.  I turned it into a bouquet of flowers by adding a little pencil crayon.

Happy Mother's Day!

Yum!

 This is another daily practice from Make Art Where You Are on CreativeBug.  

Having finished my Stillman & Birn landscape sketchbook, I'm now using my  A4 Royal Talens art creation sketchbook.  I divide the page in 2 and put my class notes on the same page.  (In the landscape sketchbook I was putting notes on the page opposite the exercise.)

Here's what the whole page looks like:

Day 9: Blind Contour

Blind Contour is a prompt in the Make Art Where You Are Series on Creativebug.  The teacher, Courtenay Cerruti, says that blind contour drawing is the only kind of drawing she does any more.  I find it fun too and the results never fail to make me smile.

This is one of my baby shoes, in case you can't tell. LOL

Make Art Where You Are

 

Taking classes is how I stay inspired these days.  My local public library gives us free access to CreativeBug, which has enough classes to keep me busy for awhile!  CreativeBug has not only instructional classes on all things creative, but also 70 Daily Practice Series.  Each of these offers 30 short videos and prompts designed to get you creating each day for a month.

Right now, I'm taking a series called Make Art Where You Are, with Courtenay Cerruti.  I'm really enjoying it, and this sketchpage of markers and pencil crayons is from Day 6 Using the White of the Page.  I'm interested in trying a bit of a mixed media drawing approach, and it was fun using markers and pencil crayons together.  I'm pleased with the results too.

I'm almost at the end of my Stillman & Birn Alpha Series landscape sketchbook which I started in 2019 for Whims in Watercolor 2:  "Loose and Fearless" with Joanne Sharpe.  I'm feeling the urge to finish and consolidate sketchbooks again.....

Sustainable Cocktails

 

Who knew there was such a thing?

Playing with Blind Contour Drawing

 

I'm missing my friend Janice who used to remind me when I didn't blog.  She has been under the weather lately.

My journals have been proliferating again and I was thinking today about possibly indexing them.  Then I realized that my blog has always functioned as a kind of index for me; if so, I better not neglect it!

This is in my Talens art creation studio journal. 

On My Walk

 

These are a series of pages from Kate Sutton's Illustrated Life Journal class.  I love the square format of my journal and these little vignettes are a great way to quickly capture things I see on my walk. 

I'm finding out what I like and don't like about markers.   I like drawing things like the digger with a marker.  I like them less for large expanses of colour.

Once again, I had fun drawing the school, but not the sky.

I enjoy the limited colour palette Kate teaches and how it unifies the page.  Colour mixing is more difficult with markers than with paint. 

Sketching from Reference Material

 

This is another lesson from Kate Sutton's Domestica course.  Drawing with markers is fun and they dry instantly!

Today I'm Grateful For:

 

This is one of the daily pages Kate teaches in the new course I took recently.  Simple and fun, it helps us to think about what we are grateful for - always a good idea.  Gratitude boosts the spirit!

The colour scheme is so simple you don't need a lot of markers for this one!  She even suggests a highlighter will do. LOL

New Course, New Journal!

 

I took a course recently on Domestica called "Illustrated Life Journal:  A Daily Mindful Practice", taught by Kate Sutton.  The course attracted me for the following reasons:

• I love the idea of an illustrated life journal
• Mindfulness has been on my mind a lot lately (I'm really bad at it LOL)
• I have a lot of markers I rarely use and wanted some instruction and a structured way of using them for a longer project.  I could then decide whether I liked using them and how I might incorporate these as a change from watercolours 

Kate uses a square journal for the course and so I broke the seal on a 9 x 9 inch Leuchterm1917 journal I bought myself in November for my birthday.  I love the paper in these books - smooth and thick.

I'm going to do a series of blog posts about the course and my learnings. 

Spring Floral Flourishes

 

Last night the Westcoast Calligraphy Society put on a marvelous Zoom program taught by Heather Held in Toronto.

Our project piece was an Easter egg but I was also thrilled with my practice sheet (below).  Too bad you can't see the shiny Stickles!

I had such fun, and I'm with Heather when she told us how she found this much easier than lettering.  After a false start with a falcon nib I found a Hunt 56 in my box, which further research today tells me is closer to the Hunt 22 that she was using.  Sometimes I come out of these evenings glad that I tried, but feeling ham-fisted and wondering if calligraphy is for me at all.  It is a rare treat to do so well the first time.  (By no means are these perfect, but for a first time attempt, they aren't too bad.)

I was reminded of a similar session presented by Wendy Cowley in 2014 (pointed pen mandalas) and how pleased I was with my results from that evening as well.  

Engaging or Relaxing?

 

Sleep Therapy continues to inform my art, as I look for things to do at midnight that are relaxing rather than engaging.  I've played with coloring books (relaxing), drawing (engaging), and slopping watercolor paint around (the jury is still out on this one).

After a boring but relaxing session with a colouring page, I thought about creating my own colouring book filled with trucks.  So, I drew these trucks to paint later. 

All of these trucks were inspired by the wonderful photographs by @mozarts_ride on Instagram.

Midnight Madness

 

I'm still playing around in my journal at midnight.  Last night my toys included a parallel pen, gel pens and watercolours.