Life Book 2017 - Week 28

Seems like anytime I think an art lesson is going to be easy...it's far from it.  This was another one of those kinds of lessons for me.  Part of the instruction was to draw a face on a separate piece of paper, cut it out and then apply it over wet, Gelato colors on watercolor paper with Matte Medium.  That just didn't work!  The Gelato colors bled through onto the paper face.  So, I traced the face on to Tracing Paper, cut it out, gesso'd over the old face and then glued the new one into place where the old one had been.  I really liked creating the flowers....and my white Molotow pen worked great for the line work (highly recommended)!.  I also liked using Washi tape to create the clothing stripes, and it works well.  Looks like something else may be needed, but I'm not sure what.


This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org.

The Journey - Creating Five Wall Art Quilts

The Journey - Five Art Quilt Creations from Cay Denise on Vimeo.

This video was done many years ago, though it visually shows the overall creative process from start to finish of five wall art quilts.

Thank you to instructors Jane Sassaman, Dena Dale Crain, and Pamela Allen plus the creator of a Fast Friday Fabric Challenge and instructor of a beginning silk painting class that were the genesis for the five pieces shown in this video!

A New Project

I used acrylic paint for the background, and lots of different kinds of markers for the rest of the doodling.

The LifeBook 20 lesson was doing a layered blind contour piece. This means to draw an object on the paper while looking at the object and not looking at the paper. Sort of comes out Picasso-ish...with differences in shapes, perspective, etc. 

The layered element is another line drawing and painting of the object below the one you see that has also been painted over. The inspiration object was a decorative vintage teapot.

This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org.

I quickly sketched a bust at the J. Paul Getty Museum's Sketching Gallery recently.  The tools provided were charcoal and a couple of lighter colored pencils plus paper and artist's seat.  Charcoal is not my typical medium and I had some blending challenges with it as can be seen.  But the overall sketch is a kind of fun image...and has some character.

The Painting Workshop - Experience

My first intuitive painting from a recent Painting Experience workshop led by Stewart Cubley.  It was a weekend of freedom painting in terms of imagery.  There were no assignments other than to be open to painting the painting that wanted to reveal itself through each participant.

I absolutely loved the movie about Paulus Berenson, an amazing artist and philosopher, that was shown as part of the workshop.  I highly recommend it!

This is the Week 13 lesson through Life Book 2017 led by guest instructor, Annie Hamann of South Africa.  The lesson for me involved a lot of firsts.  It was my first time using 15" x 22" paper...so there was much more room to fill up collage-wise and important decisions about face placement-- since that came first before the body and hair.

Also, it was my first time using black charcoal.  Unfortunately, the application of it (both pencils and sticks) over acrylics just wouldn't work.  I'm wondering now if I need to try 'vine' charcoal.

I also applied layers of tissue paper to create more realistic hair color and some shadow areas in the hair.

As part of the lesson, we were to incorporate some symbolism.  What I've included as symbols for  grounding are a rose-like window within a labyrinth.

I'm really curious about what others see in this project.  When you look at it, where do your eyes go first?  Where does your eye travel, if it does?  What other things do you see?  Please feel welcome to leave a comment with any observations.


This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org.

Life Book 2017 - Week 1!

This was my first week's lesson through Life Book 2017 that I was finally able to start and get to this point today.  I may do some tweaks to it in the upcoming days/weeks, as I sit with it a bit longer.  But I'm glad to have taken some time to do art work today, as I've been missing it!

This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org.

First Week's Warm-Up from Life Book 2017!

This warm-up exercise involves writing stream of consciousness as a bottom layer, collaging followed by adding and activating watercolor crayon as a second layer, then covering that with gesso to keep building up the base leaving the top third of the page with more color/collage visibility.  Then we added our word for the year (mine is balance) plus a symbol with that word in it.  My symbol is a pair of wings with the word written as a border within them.  The number 2s at the bottom play a dual role: one is to refer to the pair (of wings) and one is to represent the word 'to'.

This piece was created through a class offered by Tamara Laporte from Willowing Arts Ltd. For more information, visit this link: www.willowing.org.

More Book Poetry/Verse Work!

I've been working on spontaneous book page poetry today.  This is fun for me because I love words and the nuances of language.  Plus I like to wax philosophically sometimes.  Beyond that, it's really interesting to be able to work with others' writing and create something totally different than the writer's intent.