Happy Year of the Rabbit

This flying bunny is done in watercolours in my Hand book.

Chinese New Year is Feb 3 and it will be Year of the Rabbit.

Black Gesso with chalk stamped designs, masking tape and acrylic paints and Year of the Rabbit postage from Canada Post

Seth Apter has a wonderful blog with lot of collaborative art. I participated in "The Pulse" in which he solicited a large group of artists to find out what they were up to and in to. The latest addition is Collections and I am in the latest group shown here. Thanks Seth for all your inspirations to make a community for mixed media artists. :)

I have been playing around with lots of techniques and ideas and having a blast in my journals.

Background is done in acrylics the girl drawn with ink dropper, then I coloured her with Pan Pastels.

Revisited journal cover adding lots of textures.

Used paper towels, bees wax, ripped text pages and a stencil.

Blue Buster

Tracing over images pressing really hard to de-boss my journal page underneath and then using Pan Pastels to highlight the lines. FUN!

EarthGirl

The Whimsy of Drawing Lab

Say What!

I have been wanting to draw more and there is lots of inspiration out there if you are open to it. I got a couple of new drawing books. One is "Drawing Lab for the mixed media artist" by Carla Sonheim. In it she has 52 very fun filled exercises to do to get you drawing. I am having a blast with it and these little drawings are the result.

The Hot Dog

Both animals were painted first with watercolours and then I added the pen work.

The Rorschach Twins

The twins were drawn with a dropper from an ink bottle. Since I did them in my journal I couldn't seem to resist closing the book and mooshing the pages together. LOL!

Lessons from Pam

This is after Lesson 4

This is after Lesson 3

Highly Prized

My Art Studio is one of my most prized possessions and I just found a new addition to add more storage and workspace. It is an island for a kitchen but built as a stand alone piece. I put all my canvas in one of the baskets and all my painting bits and pieces in the other. There are also narrow shelves on each end and the doors and drawers work from both sides.

How cool is that? :)

My Baby girl Gizelle from a photo of her when she was only one week old. I sketched this in watercolours with no pencil and I think that this is a better way for me to work. I am not sure exactly why that is. Maybe that I render the shading better in colours than with a pencil. I have been practicing this method for a few weeks now and I am really enjoying it. This sketch spans the gutter and I couldn't get the lighting on the top of the page very well.

Gizelle looked like a fawn when she was a baby. She is 24 years old and doing great!

Professor Pepper Head

It all started in 2002 when I took a watercolour class. We were painting botanicals, flowers, fruit and vegetables. Like for example a pepper. Fast forward to 2011 and suddenly inspiration strikes and the lonely pepper develops a face and then the next thing you know he sprouts a body.

He is a child of the 60's in spirit however barefoot with his floral bell bottom pants and psychedelic shirt and he is here to save the planet one bee at a time. :)

Go Professor go!

Making January Fun

Wow there is lots going on this January. I joined in the free journal workshop that Strathmore is hosting. There is a link top left. The first one is featuring Pam Carricker and it has really got me creating a lot of pages. Sweet! It is 4 lessons, one a week and this spread is after week 2.

This is the next spread showing how the cut out displays the back side of the envelope I painted. I left room on the right for words.

One of the artists gave me the idea to dig out my old watercolours and draw faces on them. This is a fun idea.

Meet Perry. LOL!

And here is Professor Pepperhead. I think he needs a body with a suit and tie, a bow tie.

Here are Zee Cool Cats? No wait those are Zeebras. :)

Here is a Zentangle I did and coloured with watercolours and the background is my favorite walnut ink.

Journal Workshop off to a good start

Ok I am a keener, what can I say? When it comes to art, I want to absorb as much as I can in this life. And its all about the process.

I am processing. :)

On holidays till Jan 10th and want to cram it in while I can.

This horsey spread is bordered with Copper hair. Copper was my Appaloosa and he had the most interesting colours and patterns in his hair so I took some pics and blew them up. I ripped strips for the border.

I started off with Ochre and then the red and it just seemed destined to have an Asian theme, which I adore.

This is from the first day of the Strathmore Journal Workshop.