If You can't say something NICE, don't say anything!

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Well, dear people out there...I was brought up with the above axiom...so my mouth has been very quiet, my blogs very quiet. 

I've spent the last two months buried in small projects, streaming favorite shows..(Bridgerton was so fun). Reading and doing lots of art. LOTS and lots of art.

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Experimenting...gesso on watercolor paper, alcohol inks, water color, salt, and just letting it all go...

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these are sections

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salt, rice thrown on the wet inks/paints.

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Spraying with alcohol and rubbing areas off...

I took three different classes in January and two in February, but the final one lasted 25 Days---++++. 

Mather classes were also good in February. 

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One of my favorite classes was these patchwork frames, which I did round with collage and still need to do a bit of enhancement.

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These are on 10x10 canvas, with magazine images, as well as lots of hand-painted papers bits and swatches.

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My two boys and their lovely wives, my daughters. Both are immigrants to the USA so I am proud MOM for them here in Chicagoland. 

 February was a 25-day challenge class with pep talks, guides, videos on all kinds of creativity and materials.  Here are a few of my favorites from that class.

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This was a two day project...laying the base, collage, and paint, markers, glazes, paint pens. I've lived in 5 towns in my life all with water...this is a compilation of my Hometowns.

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Acrylic 20 min on watercolor paper. Started as a landscape, but when you go with what happens...the eye screamed make me a face.

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I spent a whole afternoon with watercolors, pencils and water soluable markers. Taped off watercolor paper. Winter day, sharp light and our Northside backyard had great shadows...

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Tapes removed.

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Another version, I just chased the shapes and the shadows. Winter snow is never pure white...

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This is the window scene...the light is gone and the shadows it clouded up and quit.

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Another day I played with music on ...Ragtime Fats Domino, and Shostakovich with Leonard Bernstein on the piano and directing full orchestra (totally divine playing).

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Quick acrylic full page 12x18...watercolor paper. Burnt Umber, Phtalo blue, Crimson and white, a titch of lemon yellow..super fast, less than 10 minutes.

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This was a prep.,..cleaning off the palette from the beach scene, also Ultramarine blue, this is in a glossy page thrift store $1 photography book.

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Next day I saw her in all that blue water,....less than 20 minutes, acrylics, and Posca-like pens.

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I have a brain that never stops working...results insomnia, agitation...or just watching the news and this was a very bad day...20 minutes and...yes, there is everything in this.

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This was also a palette cleanse piece, where I rubbed unused paint on loosely with water, the next day I saw this in the splotches and patches and did a "Selfie" with my computer screen camera on. Is it accurate, somewhat, a bit of exaggeration.  Ever stared at yourself for 20 minutes?

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It's definitely a trip into different techniques and materials. Watercolor paper, water soluable crayons, markers, charcoal, alcohol sprays, pens...

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This one went so fast --less than 15 minutes..limited palette, lemon yellow, pthalo blue, burnt umber and white... scratching, palette knife and brushes.

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Most fun was rolling my fingers in the white and making the water. Best part of the 25 minute limit is I'm walking away and not fiddling with things. I like that. I may force myself to walk away MORE!

Working in so many media isn't really confusing, it's freeing and I'm loving the 'play everyday' aspect. I'm going to try and do something everyday. Even if it is just prepping pages or sealing finished ones. Using paper instead of canvas is cost effective for playing and if something wonderful happens you can mount it or frame it. I've even used Multimedia paper for bases with a plastic placemat behind them...and it holds up fine.

Hugs to you all, I hope you have had someway of coping with your world this last two months. 

Sandi

Any questions I'll be happy to answer, or email me at barlane27@gmail.com.

Thanks so much for visiting,

 I will post at the following Link Parties, I hope you visit them.

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OldNewGreenRedo, is an ad-free blog.  

I do not endorse or receive any $$ for any products I may use. I enjoy showing how I use products, 

but I do not receive any $$ from anywhere I shop.

Thank you for your cooperation, 

Sandi 

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Quick overview of Class Creative Reset with Louise Fletcher

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Louise Fletcher's Creative Reset was a freebie class of 10 days---with an 5 extra days of discussions and prompts/demos. 

Louise is an amazing giving teacher...allowing you to expand your work...become more creative and releasing the artist within you. Nothing is copied, but you work on your own with prompts rather than instructions. This is some of the works I did in those two very long weeks.

Louise's 'Find Your Joy' classes are over $1300, so I was happy to soak up all the free information I could. She has lots of demos and short bits on You Tube and I will be going through every single one. If you are interested Louise Fletcher website is HERE.

I'm still trying to find my style, and I know it will take time. I'm hoping I'm somewhere between realism and abstract. 

Thanks for looking.

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

Thanks ALWAYS for visiting!

I will try and respond to every comment and answer every question. Please don't use my photos without my permission.

 Sandi Magle

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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!!!

Thanks always for visiting, 

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

Join me at these fine blog parties:

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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.  

 Please do not use photos without linking back to this blog without my permission.  

Thank you for your cooperation, 
Sandi 

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. 

Join me at these fine blog parties:

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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.  

 Please do not use photos without linking back to this blog without my permission.  

Thank you for your cooperation, 
Sandi