Friday, May 30, 2025

Sketchbook BingeFest: Color/Pattern with Faith Evan Sills

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Sketchbook BingeFest 

Gathering Color and Pattern

Wow, these projects are flying. I had a hard time deciding to pick an image for this color pattern project. Faith led us through looking at a photo---any sort, she used a muted home decor photo to create a page of patterns and mixed colors suggested by the photo. And adding designs reminiscent of textures from the photo.

BUT, 
I still have these three palettes I'm trying to use up of three basic yellow, blue, crimson and some brown up.

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Going through my mail, I saw this great photo from a blog I follow on dolls, Antique Lilac..Mary Boer shared some vacation photos...and my favorite was this one of fishing bouys along a dock here on her blog:
HERE
She does fabulous handmade dolls and scenes along with detailed settings. Her dolls were on the seashore plus she added a few maritime photos.

Mary Boer Photo

HER PHOTO: definitely had color and pattern for inspiration.  I choose three bright rounds brushes and one flat brush and planned on working from my limited palettes only.

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As suggested, I broke down the patterns and shapes into basic color swatches. Working in watercolors in the sketchbook. The paper is very tight and smooth with small speckles in it, and holds up fairly well with water for a thin paper.

The blues all began with Cerulean and then adding Crimson, a bit of yellow or Burnt Umber to change the depth or tint. Grays were combination of Crimson, Yellow, Cerulean.

This was very quick....maybe 12-15 minutes.


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Turning this on it's side you can lose the actual imagery and it becomes more pattern. I worked quite wet, since we were speeding along and the watercolors definitely bled into each other. 

I also drew on a second page within a defined rectangle. Worked from a quick sketch and painted in the background before and around the bouys. Here I am going for a bit more realism, because I just really like the repetition of the image.

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Keeping in mind this is sketchbook and not a finished project I went for some shading and again layers of color. Lesson...breaking down the idea to simple shapes and forms. I managed to keep the bright contrast here with the white on the bouys.]
This was equally quick, only planned out by doing the backgrounds first.

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 Special thanks to Faith. I may try her approach again when contemplating a large piece, making lines and shapes of colors to match a desired project. Limiting a palette is always interesting...and these pieces with only the four colors are definitely a challenge. 

Everyday a new project,

 I wonder what tomorrow will bring!



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



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To Thine Own Self be True! A Journaling Page in the Sketchbook.


I'm trying to choose different ideas and applications that I wouldn't normally do...Affirmations is something 
I DON'T DO. ?

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So, I viewed this tutorial titled under affirmations titled 
Alphabet Pocket Book with artist/instructor Rachel Hazel 
listed in the 
Sketchbook Revival BingeFEST tutorials.

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First thing we did was make a small envelope after we scribbled words/thoughts/affirmations on an entire piece of paper. We used a portion of the paper to make a small envelope.

I used a thick grease pencil on my sketchbook paper and covered it with words loosely written in cursive. Grease pencils glide across smooth paper, and I knew I could use any medium on top of it if I needed to.

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Then, I made a folded book or sheave of small pages to go into the envelope from that first page.

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I was thinking all the time, how in 20 years time, very few people under the age of 40 would be able to read this...hmmmm? 
I enhanced the lines with some colors and scribbles with some pastel alcohol markers.

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The envelope was centered and glued on the page and the 'book' sheave inserted in the envelope. 

Next for some free expressive writing, also called automatic writing. I really don't know what I had written on the first page and it was all chopped and folded up---so, we will never know. 

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 I started thinking...um, I'm always thinking, I have a brain that doesn't shut off. I did a few deep centering breaths and started on the outside of the page and wrote about my art. Outside and around, by now I was thinking of all my relatives who wrote letters going around the edges of the airmail pages to communicate their last little thoughts and best wishes, and how that sort of writing would center around the little message envelope...so I kept going around and around.

By the time I was done I had no idea of what I had written...true automatic writing, letting the movement and the action take over your words.
 
I remembered the first few words and then my brain took over leaving the experience behind.  Here are my words...scribbled around the page, I had to go back and see what I wrote.


I had a painting teacher in college that was fond of saying, "To Thine own Self be True." That was the 60's when people were trying to experience everything, whether it was something they wanted to do or not. 
It was a time of doing New for the sake of new, of brilliance and fake brilliance, when you look back.

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At this point I added more color...and some doodles around the small envelope. 
So this was my journaling, affirmations and scribbling.
This entire exercise took about 20 minutes, really a quick project.

Somehow I don't think I would have the same result if I started out with any sort of  
INTENTION!


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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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Sketchbook Revival BingeFest: Mixed Media Flora Studies with Joy Ting Chardre

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Mixed Media Flora Studies with Joy Ting Chardre  

Sketchbook Revival BingeFest 2025...this is an online signup free for access to some older tutorials by different artists. A month worth of projects and over 5 years. So that is 131 tutorials to choose from to do in a limited amount of time.


I loved working with Joy, and I really worked on this for maybe 1hour and 45 minutes. The tutorial was roughly a bit under an hour. Joy is lovely and so expressive in speaking about her art and taking some of the fear away. Using sketchbooks as a stepping stone and a license to experiment on techniques and materials.

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This was the perfect though complex first project for me in this series. I'm too cheap to enroll in the 2025 month...but they offered free access to 5 years worth of old tutorials. So I'm picking and choosing which instructors and projects I'm going to work on, emphasizing mixed media as well as watercolor...and maybe just something different. 

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The project focus was to work from a clipping/photo or old artwork, and do a couple of quick studies for colors. 

I chose a 1/2 page scrap clipping from a Fructose Magazine. I don't have the name of the original artist. I love the dark and bright of the colors in this photo of artwork.

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Drawing some small rectangles on my sketchbook, leaving an area open to the side for color ID and color mixing. I experimented with the colors I had on my palette.

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These three palettes were all loaded with the same 3 colors...a crimson, a yellow and a cerulean blue from a watercolor play session with my grandgirl and d-in-love.
 These watercolor tubes were from an inexpensive set from Michael's in an art kit that included an easel, watercolors set, acrylic set, brushes, palette, drawing pencils, paper, and a portfolio. It was one of those Christmas specials...that went on super sale right after the holidays. Basically the cost of the Large portfolio alone.

In one of the three palettes I had originally added some burnt umber. Everything else was mixed from these basic colors. It's surprising how many colors you can get doing it this way.

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After about 20 minutes of mixing and playing with some of the flowers, 
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we were encouraged to do a full size page of some detail from our source photo.

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I lightly sketched with water color pencils. After the sketch was laid out, I used alcohol markers in Dark Gray and Dark Blue to do the background before I painted.  One of the things I couldn't do with the limited palette.

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On this version I also added the small pans of color. I used the upper left blue, a dark teal green and some of the dark browns. This was a inexpensive kit from Walmart, I think.

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The multimedia came in with the colored pencils worked here and there, a charcohl pencil, and I tried several different white pencils, along with some greens and yellows for highlighting. 

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Pencils are charcohl, Prismacolor soft, and watercolor pencils by Artist Loft, Michael's store student brand.

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I was intrigued with the Eucalyptus that was lavender in the scrap photo, but it morphed into greens to balance out the cabbage leaves. The grays in the thistle were balanced out in the dark foreground. Making a large scale subject matter in a small space is always tricky. Composition has to include positive and negative space. I chose the elements I was interested in working on and tried to place them in a cohesive compostion.


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Total working time about 1 hour and 40 minutes for the quick color sketches, the tutorial, and working through the tutorial on the larger page. I did a bit of pencils at the end...the soft Prismacolors work well on top of alcohol ink as well as watercolors. 

I'm going to make sure I look for any other tutorials Joy did over the last 5-7 years.

Please ask any questions...as it's really hard to do photos when you are working from a tutorial. 

But Remember, first of all, 

Most of all------HAVE FUN!!!

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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Creative Mindfulness Mather Class: Henri Matisse's Goldfish Bowl in Multimedia

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Mather Creative Mindfulness: Henri Matisse inspirations

I was so excited to start this project, I actually worked ahead a bit. Henri Matisse was was a late 19th Century Artist who worked up until the early 1900's. Todays' inspiration was the Goldfish Bowl from 1912.


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at Our instructions today were to watercolor a goldfish bowl on Watercolor paper, and then cut it out and place on black paper cardstock, then draw a background. 

I used simple water colors...on my bowl shape. I forgot to take any photos of that process..

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You know when you are in the zone you forget everything. I used this palette.

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and also watercolor pencils to use for sketching. The white and yellow worked well on the black cardstock.
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I started sketching with Colored Pencils....just to get a feeling of where the background would be...a table a plant and brown legs to support a table. We were encouraged to make a colored patterned background.

I grabbed what I thought were oil pastels for their brilliance, but found it was an unmarked set of basic soft pastels. The colors seemed brilliant...until...

I'll explain later.

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With only 45 minutes to work on this, I fussed with the table top...I haven't done much work on black papers, but it is fun...and definitely developed a different take.

I imagined an old tablecloth with some lace edging, I thought would be interesting. 

A terra cotta pot with two kinds of plants in it and a striped wallpaper and anchoring the whole thing, two big knobby legs on the table. The colors seemed very bright but the soft pastels were very messy and I grabbed my sealer and didn't look at the label. Workable sealers are great for pastels, it seals what's on the page so it doesn't smudge or mess and then you can work again on top of it. But, this wasn't workable sealer.

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It was a can of regular sealer for wood, plastic, or finished PAINT surfaces...DUH!

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The result was...it drowned out all the brilliance and depth of the pastels and melted it.The purples I used for shadows and design in the wall paper all but disappeared. The orange wood tones in the legs and highlights of yellow disappeared. 
Lesson learned. I worked on top and again, sealed and same thing. But, the watercolors got more brilliant, 
LOL. Another Lesson learned.

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Again ,I worked over with white soft prismalcolor pencils.

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You can see the dark green melted on the black paper, but not on the watercolored bowl.

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I played a bit and dampened down the colors on the bowl with some smudging of some pastels so toned down, it matched/blended a bit more with the background.

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I may try this all over again...with the proper sealer OR with Oil Pastels.

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Definitely a learning experience...we choose our own materials on these projects so it isn't Mather's fault...but live and learn...and now to go find my

Workable Fixative for Pastels, 

I know I have a can somewhere! 

Really nice article on Henri Matisse's 'Goldfish' HERE.

Have you Tried anything NEW Lately!

No class the week of Memorial Day...so I'll have to find something else to work on. 


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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