Mather Mixed Media Project with Interesting results

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One of the reasons I take these Mather classes for seniors is to loosen up, experiment and work with new materials. After 45 years stuck in clay, I really wanted to spread my artistic wings and reawaken my childhood zeal over all art mediums. Mather offers everything from poetry, writing, crafts, exercise, educational classes free for seniors over 55.

Free online classes for seniors: Mather Classes

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Creative Mindfulness classes are based on mindfully centering yourself, then letting go, add a little art history which leads us to working with prompts based on a particular artist's art. 

This week, Ketki Fadnis was the selected artist. Ketki is a self-taught Pune, Indian artist who states, 

"Art is a healing process of body to mind and mind to soul".

How completely true. When I was going through my third knee replacement and had to wait so long...I soothed myself through watercolor painting.

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Ketki works in different medias, abstract as well as these amazing florals where she paints an entire canvas and then blocks out a background around a design, here she chose floral flower pots. I love the movement that crosses across her shapes. 

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We were given the choice of any type of different materials. Here I am working with my alcohol markers  on 12x12 cardstock. I really like how well the cardstock accepts any media with minimal stretching or peeling. 

Here we were encouraged to fill a page with shapes, lines swirls and doo-dads. This scribbling was very quick, maybe 3-5 minutes.

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I'm trying to empty this watercolor palette so I can clean and have a fresh start, so I was limited to what was left on the palette. Thinking I would use alcohol marker as the background in black..so I went bright in choosing my colors.

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You can see I was pretty random with the colors, but I like how the blue lines show lighter under the transparent/translucent water colors. We had to work very fast. 

Some people worked in pastels, oil pastels, crayons, charcoal, colored pencils (tedious),  or markers as well as watercolors. The recommendation was to do acrylics to do the back spaces.

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With a white (which didn't show up) then a black charcoal pencil I outlined my vases and then leaves. I originally thought of turning the paper around and cutting out my shapes an mounting them on another page, but I followed directions and used acrylic on top of the alcohol markers and watercolors. 

Since I used quick washes...the watercolors dried pretty fast. 

It took almost 3 coats of paint on the background to get it to this stage. I may enhance or add a table or line in black..as these are floating in space, which bothers me.

If I do this technique again, I'll wait long enough for it to be completely dry before doing the background. Bleeding was minimal but persistent, so that would be a good idea. Maybe working on three or four of these at a time would work giving you time to let everything dry. 

The Apple Barrel acrylic paint from a Mather kit (rate this as kid quality only) light blue acrylic was what I had on hand without trundling downstairs in search of some better paint...the class moves so fast. I would definitely use a better paint with better coverage and a more flat finish.

How About Give this Method a Try!

and HAVE FUN!

Even great for kids on a smaller scale, maybe turn the finished Scribble that's colored over into hand cut out shapes..houses, pots, plants cars and then mount them on colored paper.  Great dexterity project for all ages.

Thanks always for visiting, 

I will try and respond to every comment and answer every question. 

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All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own, I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or any products shown.  

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Thank you for your cooperation, 
Sandi