The 31 Days of January - Selected Efforts

The 'Grown-Ups Table' (or GUT as it is fondly called) is Wendy MacNaughton's brainchild on Substack. As a practicing artist, she led her subscribers through January with daily themed art prompts that included great information about techniques, artists, and art genres among other topics.

It was a super experience and work too. Part of participation involved reading others' posts and commenting on as many as you could. With 700-1,000 posts per day, I'm sure some were missed, but I learned a ton from others. I saw innovative interpretations of the prompts, learned about what people were intending with their work, and what memories they may have chosen to represent visually -- all sprinkled with some laughs along the way. Thank you Wendy and the GUT community!

Photos of some of my favorite work that I did (aside from the blind contour drawing posted in January) are below. The materials I used throughout the month were colored pens and markers plus watercolor on sketchbook paper. I'm loving how my sketchbook has developed quite a bit of personality as a result!

Drawing some ornaments

A feeling mandala

Taking a hike

Collage of three blind contours

Comments

Introducing 'Kaleidoclown'

For fun, I've drawn one of my own photos (yes, I was dressed in a clown outfit) and added a wild and crazy background to accompany it for today's practice effort. As part of sketching the piece, it was split into four sections with two opposing diagonal lines. In terms of color choices, I've worked with color gradations for some shape sections. Can you believe, there are five major shapes in this effort? There really are -- circles, squares, trapezoids, triangles and spirals. I think the substrate is Biengfang Watercolor Paper (140 lb.). The materials used were Ohuhu markers, Micron 01 pigment ink pen, some red Stickles glitter glue for the nose, and a white Posca pen (for white dots on the face and to highlight eyes) and a yellow one (for yellow dots in the center of the flowers on the hat). There was no intention in working on this piece other than to have fun...and based on how it looks, I'd say well done!. One thing I learned is that blending with the Ohuhus i

New Project in Progress

I'm working on a new project with multiple layers and shapes of different colored organzas. It is an interpretation of lighting on an ice rink...from a show I recently saw. There is a lot more stitching to do, but I like how its coming along. I'm learning organzas are not easy to work with especially when you layer them and have overlaid edges. The fabric also tends to ravel easily. This post also linked to http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com .

A New Sharpie Drawing/Painting

This effort was done starting with a 5-minute sketch while process photos were taken along the way. My intention was to work on color selections and to complete the jewelry/dangles to stand out without overtaking the female image (and maybe even getting a sense of dimension with their use). This is the second project in which a straight line across the page has been added to interrupt the wavy/curved lines -- and to show that using subtle color adjustments on each side of the line. (The first project that incorporates a line can be seen in the August 23rd post,) I'm pleased with how this came out. There are a few areas where the decoration looks sparse, but I notice it seems restful to my eye, since the balance of the Sharpie-painted areas are much busier. What is your experience looking at it? What draws your attention first?

Cay Denise

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