Paper Art Explorations from Mather

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Hi Everyone, I hope you are enjoying our lovely Fall. 

Here in Illinois it was in the 90's yesterday..even in NE Illinois. However we get daily reports of all the birds migrating overhead. We are on a direct flyway from Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, and we had a huge flock of Canadian Geese overhead a few days ago.

My Mather Paper Explorations class this month was about a Birds' Journey. I worked on a collage over a watercolor 'play' piece which I had set aside to dry a few days back on multi-media paper.

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This prompt was Birds in Flight and I thought this would be a great background for the 45 min class theme.

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Watercolor washes and loads of paper I had made previously. The birds are cut in multiples from cardstock. All the prints/papers were ripped. I find that action so soothing and also energetic...how can that be both???

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I use gluesticks to attach all my torn pieces, ...and then planned to seal the whole thing. Since everything is in watercolors I sprayed it first with workable fixative to secure the watercolors. 

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I titled this "Racing the Storm".  Many species of Birds have to travel thousands of miles instinctively to reach Winter quarters. Our feeders are very busy this time of year, this week we had a Pileated Woodpecker juvenile in the trees here for a few days and now he is gone. 

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Is this a great work of art...NAH...but it was fun, timely and a gentle reminder we are all on a Journey of sorts! 

Again, working with a time limit really helps and I'm learning to quit...instead of over ponder and mess it up.

Free Mather Classes for Seniors! HERE

May Your Journey move you 

this Fall season???

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Sandi Magle

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. 

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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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Sandi