Eyes And Noses

I recently started an online class that is completely out of my comfort zone.

I love the colorful art of the teacher, Ardith Goodwin so I decided to give the class, “Distortion of Eyes and Noses” a try!

I thought you might enjoy seeing how I created a whimsical eye yesterday from one of the assignments.

I started with a watercolor background to give me inspiration.  I drew a quick sketch in pencil.

I used the pencil sketch to get my creative juices flowing.  I added details with a black permanent pen and additional color with Tombow markers.

I finished by softening the watercolor around the eye with gesso and a quote:

I encourage you to change the way you look at things!

Cheers! 🙂

Landscape Vignettes

Perhaps you recall the online landscape art class I told you about from Anita Lehmann?  If not, you can learn more about it here:  Exploring Landscape

I enjoyed painting these 1.5 x 1.5 inch landscape vignettes in watercolor; the first 2 rows were from my imagination and the last 3 rows were free photo images of lake and wheat field images from unsplash.com

I discovered a limited color palette and subject matter made the exercise more cohesive and less busy in my last 3 rows:

New materials I used for this project were removable tape – 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch in diameter that I purchased locally at Michaels and Art Graf watercolor graphite that I purchased online from Dick Blick:

I encourage you to give this exercise a try…

I learned to see landscape shapes and elements of design instead of focusing on small details.  It also helped me to work quickly and get a feel of the landscape instead of focusing on minute details.

Cheers! 🙂

Inspired By Autumn Colors

We had a sunny, blue-sky Autumn day in the Pacific Northwest yesterday.  It inspired me to take these photos of trees in my yard and then splash some watercolor paint around!

Nature is full of colorful inspiration! The name of each tree is under the photo.

River Birch Tree – has interesting bark texture and greenish-gold leaves.

Sunset Maple – Fall colors of a sunset!

Crabapple Tree – the birds love to feed on the tiny crabapples in the winter. This tree is color-filled all 4 seasons.

Larch Tree – needles turn gold in Autumn and fall off.

And my watercolor experiments:

How does nature’s colors inspire you?

Cheers! 🙂

A Strange Case…

Today’s weird bird is a strange case…

Could it be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

A before and after photo:

Perhaps it is just an ordinary “Two-Headed Hat bird,” not to be confused with this one: The Cat Bird

If you’d like to inspect it further, here is a close-up photo:

Hope your day is clearly fabulous…

Happy Weird Bird Wednesday!

Cheers! 🙂

A Different Perspective

I don’t know about you but sometimes I get stuck in a creative rut…

When creating becomes less fun and spontaneous, I realize I need a break.

I need a different perspective.

Taking a blogging break has helped me realize that creating art doesn’t have to be about knowing the direction I am going in life or art.

It can be about the JOY in discovery.

It can be experimenting with different art mediums such as watercolor paints…

And being inspired by aerial photography at National Geographic to create abstracts by dipping my paintbrush in paint.

I don’t have to create a masterpiece, I just need a new perspective and keep experimenting with JOY! 🙂

I hope you find JOY in what you create today.

Cheers! 🙂

What The?!

Bleep!!

A short blip to wish you…

Happy Weird Bird Wednesday!!

Cheers! 🙂

H, I And Pattern Play

I realized that I hadn’t shared my letters, “H” and “I” from my watercolor Alphabet Journal that I did in July on my blog.

I added the collage portion to these letters last weekend.  I think this page is extra happy:

And you all know how much “I” love flowers!

Last night, I had only a few minutes to paint before dinner so I created this experiment in watercolor:

Watercolor pattern play is relaxing and fun!  I encourage you to give it a try!

Cheers! 🙂

 

The Feckenham Family…

The Feckenham family had similar features…

And could easily be found in a crowd!

Hope these funny faces give you a smile today!

Cheers! 🙂

Drawing Quirky Characters…

I discovered this online class over the weekend at JeanneOliver.com – Quirky Characters with Lucy Cooke…

And I haven’t been able to stop drawing… a very good thing! 🙂

Here are my beginning drawings in my sketchbook on Friday:

I wanted to loosen up and create more quirkiness in my drawings…

So I decided to start my faces with something familiar…a little paper collage:

Experimenting with different drawing materials helped me relax too.  I also like how Lucy gives different ways to start a drawing of a face:

I started the ones above with watercolor hair and then used water soluble Faber Castell graphite pencils to add the details.

It was super fun to give little “stories” to my characters as I did with my collage ones.

I did the sketches below with a .7mm pencil, blending stump and a little color pencil where mentioned:

I think I have come a long way in my pencil sketches in just 3 days!  I think that Lucy Cooke is such a good teacher.

This class is teaching me so much and I’d highly recommend it if you’d always dreamed of drawing faces that are playful and fun!  It is one of the more reasonable online classes I’ve taken in price yet it doesn’t disappoint in content either.

Cheers to quirky drawing! 🙂

The Power Of Touch

I do not believe we can ever understand the depth of love…

And the power of touch!

I started my two hands in watercolor last week, if you recall:

And added the finishing “touches” in ink over the weekend.

Two people who “touched” my life with love recently passed.  One a family member and the other the mother of a friend.  Both ladies were 95 years old.

It has made me think more about how others touch my life and how I have the power to touch others with love.

Cheers! 🙂