March 31, 2013 April 2, 2013

I hate to be silent for several days but I have been out of town. My sister invited me to their cabin in Tennesse for my niece’s birthday. Their cabin is at the top of a bluff overlooking the Wolf River. Each morning I would rise early and sit looking out the window at the grays and browns of the surrounding forest. You begin to see the greens of the evergreens and the bleached ochres of the dry leaves. I – of course – had taken my crayons and paints with me. I did two little paintings of my impressions of the view off the deck.

Cabin View 1

I used the crayons and shrink wrap technique to start the painting. This gave me the background texture and the location of the trees. I then used crayons, paint and colored pencil to finish the paintings. I also used sepia ink markers on this one.

Cabin View 2

We had two days of rain and the atmosphere was very heavy and misty. These were done on FLUID – sorry! NOT LIQUID – paper. I finished both of my small blocks of watercolor paper while in Tennessee so I will definitely need to get more. This is great paper to use for experimentation.  Very cost effective!

October 21, 2012 October 21, 2012

Something a little bit different today… In the Cheng Khee Chee workshop he taught a technique that uses a monoprint as the basis for a painting. You paint thick, relatively undiluted watercolor on a shiny white masonite surface and then place a piece of japanese paper (he uses unsized Kozo paper) on top of it. You can lift it and if you don’t get enough transfer put it down again and spritz with water. You then mount the damp monoprint on a piece of masa and let it dry. Then you LOOK to see what you can find.

In this monoprint I thought I saw the sun peaking through a forest so that’s how I developed the  painting. Again I used watercolor and colored pencil. I did a rough outline on the paper before starting to paint but I wanted to be careful with the paper. I’m not sure how fragile it is. I did find out that the unsized paper is very absorbant. It was really fun to work with. Very different. Here’s the final product. At least final…for now!

Monoprint 1 – Finished

July 20, 2010 July 20, 2010

Last week was super busy. My grandson is now in Afghanistan and he sent a “rush” request for things he needed. I made two shipments to him and started a third. We do not know where he is at in Afghanistan but he has moved into the countryside. AND last Saturday we had a shower for the fiance of my oldest grandson. They are getting married in mid-August. The shower was lovely and hosted by my youngest daughter who lives near South Bend and works for Notre Dame University. Her birthday was in late June so we ALSO celebrated that. Whew!!! It was a hectic week.

Ian and Jakob's Fantasy Forest Paintings

My youngest grandsons are staying with me for a few days so we did an art project yesterday.  I saw this activity on someone’s blog and I tried to find it again so I could give them credit but I couldn’t find the post. I thought this exercise was really interesting and created beautiful pieces so we gave it a try.

Jakob working on his Fantasy Forest

Ian starting Step 2

We wet our paper and just painted in colors allowing them to mingle and merge.   Then we drew in the outline of trees and painted the negative spaces. We did this again later and wound up with our very own versions of a Fantasy Forest.

Grandma's Fantasy Forest