A Private Session with Model David

I recently had the privilege of drawing David at a private session. 

I used a variety of different drawing media, selecting whatever looked like fun at the beginning of each pose, from colored pencils, to graphite, to ink pens, an ink brush pen, and even watercolors.

The session began with a series of 1-minute gestures.

During the 2-minute gestures, David used a bright fabric flag on a staff as a prop.

We moved on to 5-minute poses, and I was able to add complexity to my drawings.

The short gestures helped me to warm up, and the 10-minute poses felt extravagantly long.

We finished with some 15-minute poses, including one with a bag of snack food.

I'm grateful to David for his creativity in presenting these beautiful poses.

Painting Flowers with Pastels

I've been teaching a class in painting flowers with pastels at the Community College of Beaver County.  

Each week, I buy flowers for class, and bring in pastel paper to match.  We sketch and paint the flowers while listening to classical music. 

The first class we had gorgeous fuchsia & yellow lilies.  We practiced drawing them on brown craft paper, and then switched to Canson Mi Teintes pastel paper.

In each class, I demonstrate the process of beginning the drawing, then adding colors and finishing with details.

This week, we drew bright, summery sunflowers. The rich oranges and yellows felt inspiring and sunny.

If you'd like to take a class with me, check out my classes page here:

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/p/online-art-classes.html

Art Journaling 101 with Amy Maricle

 

I am taking an online course from artist and art therapist Amy Maricle of Mindful Art Studio. 

Art Journaling 101 walks you through ways to jump right into creating, beginning with defusing the inner critic by writing out what our critic says to us and making a drawing of it.  

I call mine the Hobgoblin, and I imagine it to be a cranky, snide gargoyle.

Afterwards, we turned our attention to embracing our Muse.

Through the course, I've been eager to watch each short video and create more pages because the process is so easy.  

It's inspiring to have an instructor outline a technique, then invite you to make your own variations.

Amy demonstrates a variety of techniques for creating backgrounds as well as ways to fill the backgrounds with drawings and writing.

We created backgrounds in watercolor, 

both splashy and smooth.

Instead of facing a blank white page, now there's an inviting field of color on my art journal pages.

Amy demonstrated a technique using 2 colors of Caran D'Ache Neocolor II water soluble crayons with gesso. I incorporated a layer of music sheeting for more texture.

She shared a simple technique for filling a page with acrylics.

Which provided the ideal surface to write a quote.

I recommend taking this inexpensive course because it inspires you to jump into creating right away.  

Sometimes, the hardest part of art making is getting started and deciding what to do.

I created all of these pages in a span of one afternoon. I tucked the activities into an otherwise busy day, and felt uplifted by the process.

Here's a link to the class: Art Journaling 101.

Happy Creating!

Collage Planner Pages

My best friend Robin says that instead of "To Do" lists, she makes "Get To Do" lists for each day.  

I love that idea, and have taken it one step further, collaging and decorating my "Get to Do" pages.

I started with an out-of-date planner that I purchased for a quarter at the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse.  The quality of the paper, and the graph paper style attracted my eye.  I simply write a new date over top of the printed date.

I decorated these pages with stamps I made by cutting designs into pink erasers.  You can read a blog post about making those stamps here.

You can see some of my other collaged journal pages here.

I also use colored pencils & permanent ink pens to create pages like these.  I doodled a shape, then responded to that shape by adding other shapes and lines.

This is one of those projects that eliminates the fear of not being "perfect." It's just a planner page, so there's no pressure.

It helps me to see how reducing expectations on myself opens me up to follow my intuition, to stop judging my art making, and to free up my lines.

What if I created like this all the time?!

What if you gave this a try? 

Use what you have and doodle in your daily planner.  See what develops.

You may find new lines, shapes and approaches in your art making.

Happy Exploring!

 I got a new set of Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils for the Pet Portraits in Colored Pencils class at the Community College of Beaver County.

One of the easiest ways to drop into creative mode, I find is to simply test out your new supplies by making a chart with the name of each color and a sample of that color. This process of swatching shows you exactly what color each pencil or paint type is.  

Now that you are familiar with your new supplies, ideas pop up for sketchbook projects.  In my case, the daylilies were blooming right off the front porch where I sat in the late afternoon sun.

I hope you'll try swatching your art supplies.  Perhaps you have some colored pencils or watercolors, or a set of markers.  Testing them out can be your entryway into creativity!

Portrait of a Kitten

I recently taught a Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil course at 

the Community College of Beaver County.  

As a demonstration, I used the photograph below to create the drawing above.

A high quality photograph is the best reference to have, so references like this Life magazine will give you a great start.  Because photos like this are copyrighted, you can't sell your resulting artworks, but they are very helpful to use when you are practicing.

I started with a graphite sketch, then erased most of the graphite marks, and began adding in the colors swatched along the left side of the drawing.

I started with the eyes, as I find that they are the most important feature in a portrait.  If you get the eyes right, and give the idea of the other facial features, with loose lines for the fur, 

the viewer's eye fills in the rest.

If you'd like to practice drawing animals from high quality photos, 

check out my Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil page here: 

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/p/pet-portraits-in-colored-pencil.html

I hope you have fun drawing these beautiful animal friends!

A Zoom Art Date with The Unexpected Gypsy

As a Patreon supporter of The Unexpected Gypsy, I get regular inspiration and instructional videos from artist Wendy Robinson. One recent benefit of supporting her was a live Zoom session in which she & her Patreons created while we chatted.

It was lovely!

Each of us chose our own project to work on.

I created these faces on old book pages using an India ink brush pen.

The ink flowed readily from the brush, and sassy, peaceful, powerful faces appeared.

I find that doing this type of open-ended creative project while listening to a conversation or watching a video allows me to shift into a relaxed attitude and just play.

This character looks like a fairy superhero to me -- I added splashes of watercolor to the face after the India ink dried. 

I hope you find an opportunity to create in a loose, unplanned way.  To simply allow yourself to play with your art supplies.