What do I collect?

For this week's mini-exercise for MATS, we've been instructed to gather "collections" of our own and photograph them, then start sketching and painting.... hmmmm I don't collect anything. No figurines of birds, or vintage letters, or mugs or whatever..... this is tough. I've gone around the house and pulled together a few things... still working on this. Much of it belonged to my grandma - I guess that's a reoccurring theme for me these days. Tomorrow I'll take pictures of my plants - there's quite a few of those.

Sam's collection of toys, which he immediately jumped on as soon as I starting taking them out of his basket

My grandma's crocheting supplies, doilies and buttons

My grandma's extensive sewing kit

Jewelry from my jewelry box - I don't wear a lot, and don't own much

A collection of items that belonged to my grandma, that mean something to me

MATS Week 4 - Wall Decor

This week in Lilla Roger's Make Art That Sells course, we covered Wall Decor, and were given the assignment to create one or two abstract collage-style wall paintings, geared towards the 25-45 year old female customer - we had to use some sort of floral motif, and also include at least one word.

I challenged myself this week - even more than the restrictions of the assignment - by not using the computer AT ALL for this. It was wonderful to paint and glue and cut and draw and make a huge huge mess in my studio - wonderful and freeing and sloppy and lovely and also in a way, a giant relief to get back to my roots, back to basics.

I'll be doing this again.

I struggled with what words or phrase or quote to incorporate... I really can't stand inspirational quotes - they make me gag. So it was hard to find something that didn't make me want to shove a pencil in my eye.... in the end, I figured it would be good to stick with the theme of this entire class for me : change, progress, journey, growth, etc. You can see what I chose in the photos below.

As for color, we were assigned a limited palette of two colors, and I had yellow and blue. I was grateful for these limitations, because going so far out of my comfort zone with traditional mediums was enough of a challenge for me. If I had to do it over again, I'd go a little lighter, with more neutrals or white.....

The mediums and materials I use in my two pieces: 12x12 canvas, acrylic, pen and ink, watercolor, various yellow and blue papers, vellum, tissue paper, thumbtacks and..... I used bees wax!! I've always been in awe of artwork that incorporates it - such a lovely texture and feeling. I'll definitely be doing that again and again in pieces to come. This assignment has inspired me to get away from the computer (well, the whole class has) - and let myself PLAY with art. I'm back, baby!

This is the piece I submitted for class.

Close up

And another close up

Collecting bits of this and that...

With this week's mini exercise, I kicked myself over and over again for getting rid of so much STUFF in the move last month, as we were instructed to gather papers, textures, bit of this and that, and random  things to collage with later in the week. Assigned colors by astrological sign, this Sagittarius collected yellow and blue items. I raided my studio, and my newly inherited sewing machine and kit from my grandma, who passed away a few months ago. I haven't had time to go through it yet, so it was a JOY to sit down and dig through all her buttons and thread, machine parts and doilies.

MATS week 3 assignment - cranky grumpy ornery snail

Last week's focus for Make Art That Sells was on the children's book market, and our assignment was to create a cover or a double page spread for the Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Snail and The Rose Tree", based on our snail sketches from earlier in the week, and hand-drawn lettering.

My double page spread

The story is pretty bleak - it features an ornery, selfish, dark, mean snail, who cares for no one, puts down those around him, and never changes. A lot of people in the class didn't care for how dark and bleak the message was, but I enjoyed it. I liked drawing a crotchety snail, and I wanted to show with color, how gray and depressing his outlook was. I had a great time drawing the type, and will definitely try that again in future pieces.

I tried again the scan-on-my-sketches-and-use-Live-Trace technique that I did back in week 1 for bolt fabric, and I really like the sketchiness of my snail character. I added color and texure and pattern in Illustrator - and that was a big deal for me, since I normally NEVER use texture in my work, only flat shapes. Its opened up a whole new world!

Overall, I like my piece. It conveys what I wanted it to convey, and I branched out with texture. As I was finishing it though, I wished I had done it in traditional mediums - either pen and ink with some collage or paint, or pastel or something.... I wish I had left more white space, and really focused more on the bleakness of the snail. It was hard to juggle how much life and color of the rose tree to show, in correlation with the grayness of the snail's life... And I wished I had used funkier colors - I'm still having so much trouble branching away from my usual palette - aurgh! (Though its a lot more neutral and gray colors than I normally use.) This is one assignment that I think I will do again after the class is over.

Snails... mad, sad, nerdy, sporty and everything in-between

This week's mini exercise finds me sketching snails and playing with hand drawn type... And I'm having a lot of fun!

MATS Week 2 Assignment - Tabletop!

This week in my back-to-school adventure brought us to the world of home decor, with the week's big assignment focusing on table top and plates. We were instructed to use the sketches from earlier in the week of seed pods, leaves and unusual flowers, and create 2-4 plates. So far I've done 2, and since I'm going out of town for the weekend, I guess I'll be stopping at that amount.

As I write this, I am exhausted! I've spent a marathon day today, cranking out this artwork (though I started it several days ago, and have been working a little each evening, today was the main stuff.) My head hurts, I'm thirsty, but I'm excited about the results. I PAINTED!!! WHOOO HOOOOOO. This was one of my goals for this course - to break away from completely vector art and get back to traditional mediums. I played to gouache, and incorporated pen and ink, scanned them all in, and layered them together in Photoshop. Hooray for texture, hooray for dirty paintbrushes, hooray for breaking out of my comfort zone!

Actually, it wasn't quite as painful as I had anticipated - in fact, I really really enjoyed it, and I'm excited to keep playing in the upcoming weeks. Whats next? Who knows! Maybe I'll bring back cut paper from my college days, maybe I'll dig out the acrylics again - the sky's the limit.

This one is the one I submitted for class.

Seed pods and bud doodles

Week 2 of Make Art That Sells finds me doodling seed pods, flower buds and leaves. I broke out the gouache paint for some of them - wow its been years. I'm a little embarrassed to say a few of my gouache tubes had dried up since I last used them.... I'm thinking for this week's assignment I will go strictly traditional medium..... well, we'll see.....