Percolated Art

I got this simple but really fun new app for my iPad called Percolator. These are either my photos or art that I imported and played with the filters in Percolator. So I call it "Percolated Art"

"Gillian" Original is Mixed media

This is a photo of an abandoned nest with my porcelain quail eggs.

This was a pencil drawing

A mixed media painting in my journal

an acrylic hand print

Mixed media in my journal

Professor Longhair

"The happy blue horse"

Me photographed with my iMac

ciao!

Inspired

I have been enjoying Milliande's videos of her Seed Journals. Her day 7 inspired this face. I did a face in wet on wet watercolours and walnut ink after adding text with matte medium. I sprayed it too to make the colours blend as they would on their own with no help from me. Then I ripped the face in half and painted a new half responding to side one. Once it dried I went over it with a fine black pen, then I added a bit of highlights with a white oil pastel. Fun! Part of what inspired me was her spontaneity and part was her colour palette.

I am using the Strathmores new Mixed Media Pads, the 400 series. I really like the paper and it is really sturdy and takes a lot of wet media and collage and it is very reasonable. I am a happy customer. :)

Coming up Roses was inspired by Traci Bautista's free workshop through Strathmore. I say inspired because I got so excited that I kept going off on tangents from Traci's instructions. :) The fine lines in her hair are acrylic paint laid down with a pizza cutter. I also finished it off with the Portfolio oil pastels. The are so creamy and smooth.

"Coming up Roses"

"Tumbler" is inspired by the above and Traci's Lesson 4. Tumbler also has pizza cutter hair. In the background are stamps and letter stencils. He is also acrlyics finished with oil pastels. I love how saturated the colours are.

Inspired by Carla Sonheim's Picasso Dogs. Tons of fun.

The dog page is a work in progress there will be more added to the page when I'm done.

Happy arting!

I owe it all to Jazz

Jazz

my mahogany boy, grazing at home

A small Combined event at Beaver Lake

One day old

My buddy

Jazz Braided for a show

Hello there, my camera is not working right now so apologies for not posting much lately. I love to share which is why I am motivated to blog and show my art. I do it for me.

Originally I tried selling my wares at craft shows and got into the Sooke Fine Arts show which I was so proud of and sold my piece. I was ecstatic! I have a great job with the government of BC in Avalanche and Weather programs and now I only have a couple of years left before I can retire so I didn't want to give that up. I decided a few years ago that I would stop selling my art as my paying job can be quite stressful and I needed to take better care of myself. It was a great decision and I started making art I wanted to make not what I thought other people would buy. Now isn't that what an artists is really supposed to do. Hell Yes, I say!!!

As a result I feel like I have really grown as an artist and I am so much more satisfied with what I create. I find it far more therapeutic too. It helps me cope with any challenges I have to deal with and I have had way more than my fair share of challenges in the last year! I don't think I would have survived if I didn't do art and art journalling.

I owe my artistic gift to Jazz. Jazz was my horse I bred and I was so proud of him. He was a great blend of both his mom and dad taking the best qualities of each. A breeders dream. I pulled him out of his mom, Personality on May 19 1986, cleared his nostrils and the first thing he saw was me. Mom? He had 2 moms me and his real mom :) He was a huge brat but very loveable, and a huge challenge to train. I discovered when he was about 4 years that he loved to jump and so I indulged this to assist with training and it worked very well. Dressage is what I really wanted to do but he found it so boring. Once we got the basics down and on to the more challenging movements his interest started to peak. He was elegant and athletic so when you got him engaged it was INCREDIBLE! He had just started to excel at Dressage when the unthinkable happened.

When he was 11 he ate some Yew tree branches and died. I was devastated. We were 2 peas in a pod. He was like my child and we shared a dressage and jumping career, we we best friends, I have never ever had such close relationship with another soul before. For 2 years I sunk into a deep depression I was obsessed with not forgetting any detail of him. I started writing about him, anything I could think of no detail too small. I also added any and all photos of him I could find but there was so many moments that there was no photo for and there was never going to be that opportunity. :(

I must learn to draw.

And so it started.

My gift of art is from him and now I can't imagine my life with out it.

I still miss him but he will be in my heart forever. Thank you Jazz!

Once in a Blue Horse

I signed up for Strathmore's free online art workshops and first up is Traci Bautista with her offering of "Doodles Unleashed". I have admired Traci's art in magazines for some time, but never have taken a workshop from her. I have been enjoying watching the video which is organized, professional, well thought out. The only minor criticism is the audio fades in and out in places. But it is colourful, fun, inspiring, and gets me motivated to grab my supplies and play. Yahoo! I used some of her suggestions to create this spread in my journal. I already had the outline of the horse and was especially inspired by Traci's freedom to create by asking us to think of our approach as doodling with paint. I found this made it more fun and made me less inhibited with my paint brush. Cool! I love it when that happens.

My red paint swirls became birds as I further doodled little faces, beaks, plumes and feet. Then the horse seemed to boring so more doodling there too. Then I finished it off with some rubber word stamps.

And here is a detail of the horse.

I got so excited I only used a portion of Traci's techniques and I am looking forward to trying out some more. Check out Traci's "Doodles Unleashed" for an injection of inspiration. :) Only the first of the four lessons is posted so far.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year