Copying is good

While I've been gelli-printing, I haven't abandoned my goal to draw more. This book I'm reading at the moment, Freehand Drawing and Discovery, is a real inspiration. 

For years Ive been struggling between drawing exactly what I see (which I find overwhelming) and oversimplifying (which ends up looking like the drawings I did when I was 8). This book is helping me find a happy medium.

Another thing I've been struggling with is this thing about finding your own style, and that style being good enough. Well, James Richards says, worry about quantity first - draw every day - and quality will come along the way.  I'm not quite there yet, but I do try!

And a third thing I was worried about was copying other artists. Well, he says, copy copy copy. You will learn a lot from it, and you will develop the "muscle memory" that will help you hone your skills. This little drawing wasn't quite a copy, but let's say it was heavily inspired by one of Mr. Richards' drawings.

Like all the other drawings I've done recently, this one was Made with Paper

Sea at Killiney III

I've never done by series of paintings before. I'm only at 3 of 15 in this Sea at Killiney theme, but I do find it's difficult to replicate the freshness and energy of the first print. Of course I didn't keep track of how I did it, and I can't seem to print/paint good waves again! I know I used an old credit card, but how exactly, I'm not sure. And that's when the left side of the brain kicks in, the little voice in my head that tells me I can't draw can't paint. But we'll soldier on. I'm determined to explore this theme to its bitter end! Surely I'll be able to produce something half good along the way!

Schmincke watercolour palette

I got myself a new watercolour set - a Schmincke pan set.  Can't wait to start using it!

I can never take a good photograph of colours, and the watercolour book was too bulky to place in my scanner - but believe me some of the colours are gorgeous. I'm particularly fond of the chrome orange, cerulean blue tone, helio turquoise, may green and naples yellow.

Of the set, I'm only disappointed with two colours: cobalt green dark and manganese violet - they don't look so bad in this photo, but they are a bit dull in reality.

There were two colours I wanted in the set, vanadium yellow and ruby red (PV19), and the girl in the shop kindly offered to swap (she then worked out the difference in price - some colours are more expensive than others). I got rid of a cadmium orange (which I can easily mix) and an olive green of some sort (the kind of dull colour that's easy to mix by accident). But when I checked all the colours in the set, I realised that permanent carmine is also PV19. Ah well.  You can never have enough PV19!

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Sea at Killiney II

This one doesn't have quite the same energy as the first print. Too many layers maybe?

13 to go

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Sea at Killiney I

So, I was on a roll, and I decided to print landscapes that I know and love. A while back, I did a series of photographs of Killiney beach in stunning light. I had always intended to do something with these, but never got around to it. The beauty of Pinterest is that you can store inspiration, and retrieve it easily when you need it!

I didn't see this while I was working on this print, but BB pointed out to me that these rocks look just like the dark rocks that peep out of the sea at low tide, and the water between them and the shore is like glass. Looks nothing like any of the reference photos, but that's ok, isn't it?

Another 14 to go!

Landscape mono prints

I saw a picture recently of a gelli printing class on landscapes. It inspired me to try it out. Here is my first attempt:

More Trees

Well, this is certainly keeping me focused on drawing! Here are a few more trees:

Trees

I had originally done this one with blue skies and green grass, but it looked dull. I wanted to evoke warm weather and sunshine. So easy to do with Paper.

Happy Birthday, Timber

Trees

Plenty more tree shapes to learn.

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Drawing

Now with car and tree!

Drawing

I tried to draw a few trees in this one but it didn't work out so I erased them. Trees are in the next chapter! I need to be patient.

Here is the resulting drawing

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Drawing

BB is determined to get me drawing again.  For Christmas he got me a few books on the subject.

The one I'm currently reading and experimenting with is called Freehand Drawing & Discovery. It's really aimed at architects and urban space designers. But it's full of practical information for people like me all the same, people who would like to draw more, but who are not too sure where to start. 

First useful tip that I've put into practice below:

Draw a horizon line and draw stick people's heads on the line - whether they are standing right in front of you or way way in the distance. Draw their bodies and legs in proportion to how far they stand. Add arms. Basically, it's circle for the head, rectangle for the body, 2 flippers for the legs and sticks for the arms. Add detail to the people standing the closest to you. Add shadow. Done!

The first one below was done on a post-it at the end of my busy workday today. (And yes, it has one person whose head is not on the horizon line, but it's a child so that's why he stands lower than his mummy, but his feet are on the same level as hers). The second one was  done with Paper on my iPad last night. I'd be glad if I did one of these a day! But February is looking as bad as January for New Year resolutions. There's always March!

Home

I hadn't realised the significance of the colour green until I finished this page. I didn't even really think of it as green. But of course, home is, and always will be, Dublin. And "Home" is one of these words that doesn't translate well into French. I wonder why?

I'm very fond of the image-transfer-to-packing-tape technique. And Gelli printing. And creating stamps out of erasers. It's so much fun. Don't know what I'm going to do with the facing page yet. It's got two strips of packing tape on it, so my options are limited. Maybe I'll just leave it be. Right now, I'm thinking of a watercolour painting I've had in mind for a while...

Listen

I've given up one of my yoga classes. Two a week was too much. So I'm now trying to use the time reclaimed for art. One hour on a Monday evening is pretty good. You get to do quite a lot in that time.

A mix of gelli printing - using a mask (a picture from an old Boden catalogue), a simple stencil, and also printing to packing tape, and then adding printed words (using my Gelli plate to apply clear acrylic medium to give it the right sheen and substance)

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Breathe

I'm not painting anything big these days - no big abstract acrylics, no watercolours. There are only so many hours in the day. The art journal format is perfect for those of us who don't have enough time, but still want to create something.

I came across a nice little saying on Facebook recently - "Breathe. You don't need to get everything done right now". I actually printed it and stuck it to the wall just behind my laptop. The start of the year is always tough for me. There are all these things that need to be done, and all the things I didn't get around to doing before Christmas. So I get a bit anxious. I have all these ToDo lists, and although I do get a lot done in a day, the list never seems to get shorter. And I remember other things that need to be added to the list... No wonder I'm anxious.  So I need to remind myself to breathe. And since I'm bilingual (well, I'm not really - I'm a French speaker who's been living in an English-speaking country for nearly thirty years), I've decided to make my journal pages bilingual. 

The Crow

I've always liked crows. A bit like magpies. They're clever birds.

Oops. don't know what's happening with my screen - I'm typing and all sorts of pixelated bits are appearing and they change every time I type a letter. Spooky. Picasa is importing lots of photos while I'm writing this, so maybe that's why. Very strange...

Recently, I came across a page about image transfers. I've tried transfers with acrylic medium - but that's messy (you have to scrape the back of the transfers with your fingers, to remove the wet paper pulp. If you scratch too much, part of the picture can be damaged. If you don't scratch enough, too much paper pulp stays attached and the picture is milky at best. And it hurts. And it ruins your hands.) But this new method I found is dead easy, and as you can see with the crow on the left, it works really well. Here is how you do it:

1. Print a picture you like with a laser printer.
2. Apply packing tape over it (Packing tape is basically large sello-tape. The one I have - Dealz, where else? - is 5cm wide)
3. Rub with the back of a spoon so that the image really sets in
4. Place the image in water to soften the paper
5. Rub the paper off with your fingers
6. Let it dry - If necessary, wet again and remove any bit of pulp left. 
7. And the amazing thing is that the tape is still sticky. Don't understand how that's possible, but it is.

The only drawback to this method is the size limitation. You need to size your image to be no wider than your packing tape

(Background with left-over paint from a gelli print, applied with brayer. Stamp is my own creation - my good old "aboriginal snail" - yes, crows like eating snails. I knew there was a logic behind my choice. And the right-hand page is my effort at drawing a bit more)

Christmas Movies

We didn't get to watch as many movies as usual this Christmas - dog and everything - and I am definitely getting lazy about reviewing them.

So, let's mix our pleasures and have a journal page about the movies!

In no particular order:

Cloud Atlas - the movie of the book. I had read mixed reviews. And yes, you need to pay attention or the movie will completely confuse you. But, just like the book, it's well worth the challenge. Makes me want to read the book again. And makes me want to watch the movie again!

Amour - Not a Christmas movie at all. And probably not one to watch with elderly parents! But excellent. Jean-Louis Trintignant is fantastic as an elderly husband caring for his wife after she has a stroke. She is afraid of hospitals, and he looks after her on his own. True Love!

The Way, Way Back - the lighter of the lot, but a lovely movie all the same. A coming-of-age movie. A teenage boy (Liam James) is on holidays with his mum (Toni Colette, I think she's a brilliant actress) and her new boyfriend (Steve Carell - very different from his Michael Scott role in The Office). The boy is awkward, reserved, unhappy. He discovers himself at a run-down water park, run by Sam Rockwell (another favourite of mine - remember Moon).

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight - We watched all three over a few days. Julie Delpy plays Céline, a young French woman, who meets Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American man. The three movies follow their encounters at three points in their lives. Before Sunrise is the more romantic of the three stories - the hopes and aspirations of youth. Before Midnight takes us to the point where real life has damaged some of those hopes. Great dialogue, great light, Vienna looks great. Paris looks great, Greece looks great. Witty, Funny, Bitter-sweet. Typical Julie Delpy material. Before Sunrise takes place on Bloomsday - a nod at Leopold Bloom walking the streets of Dublin, no doubt. And how do they manage to do those long rambling walk-and-talk scenes in one shot? Three movies to watch again.

As for the journal page, it incorporates a gelli-print brayer clean-up background, golden snail eraser stamping, watercolour tree, white pen detail, origami paper and Korean stamp collage, origami crane sticker, and collage of printed titles (using ScrappyStickyInkyMess's idea of fixing the print with a light layer of acrylic medium applied to my gelli plate)

Gelli print background

I got bronze paint in the Art & Hobby shop before Christmas. Ideal for Gelli prints!
Hard to photograph, though. How do you photograph gold without reflections?
(But the scanned version is so much duller)

Gelli print backgrounds

I don't know what I'm going to do with this one, but I love the delicate leaf pattern - done with an M&S Christmas cracker (I know - I should have kept them all)

Back at work now for the last couple of days - and it's a shock to the system. January always is, between VAT, stock take, spreadsheets for the accountants, tidying up my paperwork and all of these things that I love (well, I hate the stock take, actually).

And my resolution to spend 15 minutes a day drawing is already forgotten. Maybe February is a better time to start good resolutions? January is tough enough as it is.