Doodle Art Class Week 1

I discovered the free workshops offered by Strathmore Papers this month and signed up to take Traci Bautista’s “doodle’s unleashed” class. It’s very fun, it’s FREE, and it’s pushing me beyond my boundaries. As an artist, I have to paint something, some tangible thing. With this class I’m experimenting with different ways of making marks, creating/using stencils, and trying to let it “flow”.
Here is how my painting evolved.

Step 1: spray painting with liquid watercolor, then adding a few details.

-adding some red

-using oil pastels

-adding more details

-the finished painting

I am pretty happy with the final results, it did evolve into a flower with leaves which inspired me to add the words “bloom, grow”.

Week 2 is coming up!
There is still time to sign up for this free class!

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Creating Small Bits of Art

In between paper crafting, chasing kids I’ve been trying to get back to painting and work my way through a pile of 4×5 canvases that I bought for a deal. I admit I may not be the best or even medium artiste but these have made me happy and I’m being brave sharing this online. Yay for me!

First up: Daily Bread

Starting point was vintage hymnal sheet music. I was hoping to find “How Great Thou Art”, my favorite hymn of all time but didn’t have it in my stash of stuff.
This piece is a story of the crashing waves of the ocean and how it seems you can really feel God’s power and wonder at work. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen near enough.
Specs:
Modeling Paste applied with a palette knife over the sheet music, then acrylic paint applied after drying in layers, wiped and applied a few times. One cool trick I tried was spraying my stampin mist on the semi dry paint layers and wiping off. Gave a cool effect to the colors. Honestly there was a lot of brushing and wiping and layering for such a small piece! To finish it off I applied matte medium on the entire piece, used a pointy stick to add a bit of detail on the wet medium and let dry.

Second: Be Happy

Starting point was a dictionary page, applied layers of watered paint (yellow ochre, sage green, sap green, burnt umber) wiping some off here and there. The flowers are inspired by zinnias with their big, round, pouffy, happy, blooms. Found in my scrap box the vellum piece with the quote from Tolstoy. Then because the piece seemed old-fashion looking I added a strip of white card stock punched with the SU eyelet punch.

Third: A Tree

Starting point was also from sketches I’d done of large Elm trees at the park downtown. I love big old trees that remind me of the cottonwood trees my great-grandfather planted on the family farm where I grew up. As a girl my grandma showed me pictures of how the home place looked with the little trees planted. And I would marvel at these big massive trees where a swing was hung from. I’ve been playing with a few ideas of a family tree canvas but different from a traditional family tree. The background paper is from my scrap box, an paper from 7 Gypsies (at least 4 years old), tree painted, layered with words cut from another scrap of paper.

I have a couple of more to share but I feel that they need a bit more something.

Have a great day!

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