Challenges and chances to win a seat in Ever After

Life isn’t without its challenges. Neither is art. Every day when I wake up, the first thought that enters my mind is “what will I do today?” This is such a broad question but for me it is directly related to my creativity. If, I’m not creating, then I feel lost, as if I have been disconnected from my anchor.

When I don’t know what to do, I generally fall back on classes I have available for me to learn from or work along with an amazing artist. One of those artists is Tamara Laporte. She has many classes I want to take, including her upcoming class of Ever After.

The desire to take her classes isn’t just for what I will learn in art and art techniques. The main reason is because of her personality. She radiates love. Her laughter is contagious. I find her hands beautiful and an inspiration to me that no matter my circumstances I will always be able to be creative.

Tamara Laporte is having a give-away for her Ever After course. You can read about the course here. They are conducting a blog hop with the various teachers participating in Ever After and each teacher is giving away a seat in the class. I write about this because I want everyone who reads this to have a chance at winning a seat.

I was introduced to Tamara’s work after researching online art courses. She has a free art course “Art, Heart and Healing” which you can find here at the bottom of her page. I am all about learning all I can about the way a teacher instructs before buying any of their paid classes. Most instructors give just a mini course which at times can be misleading as to how good a teacher they are, so I was impressed that “Art, Heart and Healing” is a free 4 week class. It is larger than Tam’s mini classes and a full blown class on its own with lots of content.

I am not a whimsical type artist, or I didn’t think I was. I’m not so sure now. The point I’m making is when I started taking “Art, Heart and Healing” it was when I was trying to find my way back into being able to do art like I had in my high school art classes. For some reason starting in grade 8, Mr. McFarland, awakened something in me I never knew I had. Having him as my art teacher until I graduated high school was the best thing that ever happened to me and I believed I was an artist. After high school, it was difficult to make that connection and I doubted myself as an artist.

Even though Tamara Laporte’s style isn’t really my style, the whimsical nature of her work drew me in. It didn’t have to be perfect. Everything didn’t have to be anatomically correct. I always attempted realism and my inability to create anything even close to realism was what my inner critic had a field day with. Doing Tam’s classes and hearing her say it doesn’t have to be perfect, in fact, get messy, accept what you think are mistakes, helped me respond to my inner critic in a way that helped me continue and create imperfect pieces of art. In fact, watching her make her own mistakes and how she worked with them, helped free me from my perfectionist.

I credit Tam and a few other artists, like Christy Sobolewski, and Effy Wild, for helping me re-awaken my inner artist and believe in her again, but I will never forget Mr. McFarland’s influence. This is an important journey for me and is why I created this blog to write about it.

I often face challenges when I try new mediums, or when I attempt to draw a face or an animal. I often have to let go of my perfectionist, and my natural proclivity towards details. The best advice I ever heard was when beginning a drawing, forget about the details. Start with a loose sketch, drawing just the shapes making adjustments to get them sorted out where you want them to be. Then you can begin to build upon the details.

My eye for detail generally has me immediately diving in deep. I might decide to draw a whole face but as soon as I put pencil to paper, I’m suddenly drawing just one eye in all its fine details, then the next thing I know I find out it is in the wrong position on the page. I do have to consciously put aside my attention to detail when I first begin a sketch. I have learned, if I don’t, then frustration and angst will eventually follow.

This piece of advice came from this youtube video.

I’ve learned a lot over this past year. I would have to say, the most important thing I’ve learned is how to face challenges. There have been many. Thanks to teachers like Tam, Christy and Effy, the challenges within my art, my creativity, aren’t so impossible to overcome anymore.

I hope you will check out Tam’s new class Ever After. I know I have not been disappointed in any of her classes and generally feel her content far exceeds the price of admission.

I am currently working on two drawings which I plan on painting. I haven’t decided on what medium I’ll use yet. Both are on watercolor paper which means I can use any medium I have.  I am leaning towards watercolor and augmenting it with a bit of acrylic paint, especially for highlights.

This first image is from Pull, Pen, Paint a course provided by Kiala Givehand. Thisi s my beginning sketch for Effy Wild’s course in week 4, titled “Mirrors of the Soul”. It is an inspired art journal page using our Soul card as inspiration. My soul card happens to also be my personality card, The Chariot. This is still a work in progress.

This second image is a drawing I created in mid-March. It is also a work in progress. I’m still making decisions on what else needs to be included in the sketch, and I have the challenge of how to do the background and retain the image of the mandala. Then how to bring that image forward. I will most likely go over everything in permanent ink before adding any paint. I love these ladies. I’m not sure where they came from but I am connected to them.

Being an artist is also physically challenging. I wasn’t prepared for the abuse our bodies can experience while creating art.  Pain has become a constant in my life except during some moments when I am creating art. I am fascinated by this.

~Patti

 

Choosing a style…

Style has always eluded me, no matter the category. Whether it is clothing, hair, makeup, or even art. I can look at someone or their art, and if someone has a rather unique style I can usually see it right away. I often wonder why it is I can’t seem to find my own style.

I can choose clothing that looks good on me, but style always eluded me. I had nothing cohesive. My wardrobe was all over the place. Makeup was similar except I preferred a look that was natural and not bold or brazen.

My art is a different story. I have been all over the board in regards to learning different techniques, emulating other artists styles, and not landing solidly upon any particular medium of choice, which is probably why mixed media appeals to me. And yet style continued to elude me.

The other day, I had an idea that maybe style is just about doing what I love most from all the techniques and mediums I’ve been learning. Could it be as simple as applying those things which I go back to time and time again? While at the same time, incorporating new things to see how they mesh?

I decided to give this a try.

I’ve been doing a challenge called Daily Minimoley. It is simply working in a small journal to create small pieces of art. This enabled me to do a small piece of art each day and be able to experiment with different techniques and mediums. Doing this helps me to discover what I like most. Like bright colors for one, and flowers for another. I’m learning more and more every day.

Time and again I return to mandalas though I never did any in my minimoley practice. My mandalas usually are just ink drawings and no color.  I want to add color, but how to do a mandala on an art journal page and add color is a challenge because I like to use precision when I’m doing my mandalas. I start with pencil to draw in the grid and some of the design before I move to ink.

Pencil doesn’t always work well over paint, depending on the paint or mediums used. Erasing pencil can be even more problematic. I wasn’t sure if I could draw it in ink before laying down the color. Depending on the medium for the color it could completely obliterate my ink or pencil lines.

I am determined to find a way to do this and decided my minimoley would be a good place to start even though it is a journal meant for writing with pencil or ink and not art mediums.

My first go at it came out much better than I expected.

I started like I normally do, using pencil on the untreated paper to draw out my grid for the mandala. Then I used Sakura Pigma Micron to draw over the basic shape of the mandala, then erase the pencil lines. I continued with the micron to draw in more details until I was completely satisfied with the whole page. I had added some doodles and tangles for embellishing the open areas of the page. Even though the lines from the lined paper showed through the design they were light enough to not be distracting from the overall design. This is where I stopped on the first day. I had at least done a mandala in my minimoley using the method I normally use.

The next day, I created my second page. These pages are facing one another so I used the same process as before, then added some of the same embellishments as on the other page so it became a 2 page spread instead of 2 separate disjointed pages. Now was the time for color.

When I first started out drawing the mandalas, my idea was to try and use watercolor. However, I was concerned the amount of water required for watercolors would cause my pages to breakdown, so I opted for trying Inktense pencils. I have about 8 of them in various colors, including blue, red and yellow. Using a minimum range was going to be challenging but also encourage me to try blending to produce other colors. Here is the result:

I did use light blue craft acrylic paint for the background, but otherwise, I only used the Inktense pencils, Sakura Pigma Micron, and White Uniball Signo pen. I went over the black lines after adding the color to make them bolder again since the color dulled them a bit. I used the White Uniball Signo pen to add highlights. I like the result, even with the craft acrylic wash for the back ground. Mandalas will start showing up more in my work. I have no doubt about that now. I have some ideas brewing which I hope to work on soon.

The next experiment will be to put down color, either watercolor or acrylic wash for the background before drawing the mandala.

Here are the flowers I did a while ago with colored pencils over watercolor I think or it was an acrylic wash. These are easy to do over either because I’m not trying for precision like I am with the mandala. So, I just draw using a micron pen or permanent ink and accept any “mistakes” that happen and work them into the piece.

This is probably my favorite page so far in my minimoley. I think I need to create an index of my flowers so I can flip through it for inspiration when I’m not sure what to add and know I want a flower.

Both flowers and mandalas can also be used for wonderful collage items. There are no shortage of ideas brewing.

~Patti

Hope

Below is my latest art journal page.  I came across Journal52 which is a challenge run by Effy Wild. Once a week a prompt is given. When I came across Journal52 they were in week 3. At this writing they are still in week 3. Their week 1 prompt fit my previous art journal page to a tee so I counted it as week 1. Week 2’s prompt is HOPE. I wanted a fitting affirmation statement so I went on the search for one. As soon as I found “I look towards my future with hope and happiness.” I knew it was the right one. Coming across a photo to use as reference for my focal figure of the woman with a shaved head was also perfect for the message I wanted to relay.

I’ll talk about the message in a moment. First, I’ll describe how I created the art journal spread.

I did a rough sketch of the layout with graphite, some of it changed as I went but mostly it is as I intended it to be. I painted the girl, starting with an Art Crayon in flesh tone, then laying with acrylic paint until I had her the way I wanted her. I then used some prisma colored pencils for finer details and to adjust some shading.

Once the girl was done, I collaged in tissue paper in green, yellow and blue using watered down glue. I used watered down white glue to reduce costs. If this was a commission item I would use collage medium or gel medium. I crumpled the tissue paper to give more texture to the page. I also used red and green for the center of the large flower.

Once the page was dry, I used a brayer to apply acrylic paint over the tissue paper to give it more visual texture, then I used my homemade stamps to stamp in the flowers. The rabbit is a commercial stamp. I added Faber-Castell PITT pens for color and details on the flowers and rabbits. On the large flower I used Prisma Colored Pencils.

After stamping in the flowers I realized the original position for the dove was going to be all wrong. This is the only alteration to the original sketch. Placing the bird much higher has given the spread a more balanced appearance. If the bird had been where I had originally intended it to be, the painting would have been bottom heavy. I then added in the lettering using my black Painters permanent marker.

There are a lot of things I love about this art journal spread. First and foremost it is completely my own. I wasn’t following a video, or in a class, I only used the prompt to help inspire an idea. It isn’t whimsical and it is about my life.

This is where we come to the message. The affirmation statement is how I need to look at my life and future right now.  Since 2014, it has been a long and difficult road. The woman with the shaved head represents me two years ago when in 2014 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and yes I eventually shaved my head when my hair started falling out. In 2016, I was laid off of work after 33 years of devoting my time and expertise. Finding another job has been difficult and I’m still looking.

So this is very much about me surviving cancer and the blow of losing a good job I had devoted my life to and trying to maintain hope and happiness in the midst of it all.

I am doing what I love…. being creative… taking care of my daughter. These are things to be happy about. I see this in my painting.

~Patti

Thanks to Christy…

I haven’t felt this excited since I was in 8th grade and I found out for the first time I could draw and I mean really draw. However, over the years, I have allowed fear to hamper me and other things to distract me. I won’t go into the whole boring history. Just know 8th grade was some 43 years ago.

I have picked up my pencil again and started drawing. Even so, I couldn’t seem to push myself into drawing faces. Every time I tried, I would fumble, drop my pencil and not pick it back up unless it was to draw a tangle or sketch a flower, something I am far more comfortable with.

Thanks to Christy Sobolewski’s YouTube videos on Art Geeks and her excellent instruction, yesterday, I was able to draw a face. Today, I was able to draw an even better eye, or set of eyes. I know I have a lot of improvement to go but at least she has given me the confidence to continue practicing.