Making More Art

We often want to create more frequently and make more art.  Yet it can be hard to settle in, get past the yelling of our inner critic, and establish a routine.  One approach that helps me create is to attach art-making to other things I already enjoy.  

I love to go for hikes in our state park.  Adding a small art kit and including stops for sketching helped me to fill this accordion-fold sketchbook.

Maybe you like to go to coffee shops and sip a hot drink.  What if you took a sketchbook & a pencil, and gave yourself the assignment to sketch people?  If drawing people seems overwhelming, you could draw, hats, shoes, or patrons' hands holding coffee cups.  You could even draw the festive centerpiece gracing the cafe table where you sit.  The world is full of things to draw and paint!

Make a plan. 

Think about things you love to do or things you regularly do.  Riding a bus to & from work can be an opportunity to sketch your fellow bus riders. 

Find a partner.

My husband likes to take nature photographs, and we often hike together.  While he sets up a photo, I sketch.  Do you have a friend who wants to make more art, too?  You can encourage each other and make a habit out of creating together.

Give yourself an assignment.  

Narrowing down what your subject matter will be can help you focus and feel accomplished.  You could fill a sketchbook with tiny things in nature, botanical drawings or pets in your neighborhood.

Start small.  

And build as you go.  A small sketchbook, a simple goal, etc.  Remember, persistence is far more important than seeking perfection!

Keep your kit simple.

The fewer decisions you have to make, the more likely you are to pick up your art supplies and create.  You can skinny down your supplies to fit in a small zippered pencil pouch.  You can always change out that graphite pencil for an ink pen if you prefer. What is the absolute minimum equipment that would work for you?

Celebrate your wins.  

Post your artworks on social media if you like, share it with a friend, or simply prop your artwork up in your home where you pass by often to remind yourself of how beautiful your artwork is!

Wishing you many creative adventures and a new routine to fill your sketchbook and create joy.

Happy Creating!

Hand Made Christmas Cards

I have this old Speedball block print that I made years ago.  It's my favorite holiday card design. 

When I needed cards to tuck into Christmas gifts for my family, I dug this block print out.

It was lovely not to have to go out to shop for cards!  Instead, I played beautiful music, and printed up a stack of cards.

Once you've carved a design in a printing block, you can make all the prints you like, even years later.

  The process is easy.  

You squirt a blob of ink onto a smooth surface like the enamel pan above, then roll a brayer back & forth through the ink to form a smooth, uniform layer.  As you roll the brayer, it picks up a smooth layer of ink onto its rubber roller.  

Once your brayer is evenly loaded with ink, roll it over the block print, then lay a piece of paper on top of the block.  You transfer the print by rubbing on the back of the paper.  I rubbed with my fingertips.

I used water-based Speedball black ink because it's easy to clean up.  I printed onto 55 pound vellum paper. The thin paper picked up the ink beautifully and had fewer missed spots on the prints than heavier papers.

After the prints are dry, you can trim up any uneven paper edges. I used a paper cutter to get straight sides.

You can layer colorful papers under your print or just glue it onto a blank card.  I used Yes! Paste, a thick, archival glue that you spread on with an old credit card or palette knife.  The paste is thick enough so that the paper doesn't warp or wrinkle as it might with liquid glue.  You could also use a glue stick.

Make sure you sign each card you make!  I signed the backs.

If you'd like more details on designing and cutting your own block print, you can read this post.

Happy Creating & May Your Yuletide be Artful!

Collage Style Weekly Planner Page

This weekly planner page was so much fun to create!  When you work with collage, nothing is precise or perfect, and embracing that relieves you of so much stress!

You can gather papers that catch your eye, and then slap down whatever seems sort-of right.  Don't wait for exactly the right thing; go with the layout and materials that seem fun and sparkly to you.

Here, I used a label from some British baked beans, an old Ball canning lid box, and a variety of book pages and papers that were rust stained.   You can find out more about the process of rust staining in this post.

I used paint pens for the dates, and white gesso over a couple of the pages to make it easier to write on them.  Watercolor crayons provided a splash of color in the margins between papers.

I hope you try creating your own weekly planner collage page.  You can use whatever you have on hand.  What sorts of papers draw your eye?  Do you have favorite color combinations?  Why not start gathering a handful of papers and a glue stick to play with?

Happy Creating!

Scaling up a Small Sketch

On an evening walk, I snapped this cell phone photo and used it as a reference photo for this mini nature journal spread.

 The scene was so beautiful, and the process of sketching was so fun that I made a larger painting of it, benefitting from my practice with the smaller sketch.

I went through the same process as with the smaller sketch, drawing the scene in pencil first...

...then inking over the pencil lines with waterproof ink.  Once the ink was dry, I erased the pencil with a gum eraser.

Because the painting was larger than the mini journal sketch, I could delve into more detail in the beautifully wobbly tree limbs and the fascinating wildflowers.

I began painting the sky and the distant hills.

I knew from the sketch that I had to be careful to let the first washes dry, and to be precise when laying in the yellows and oranges of the sunset.  If I mixed the sunset orange-yellows into the blue of the sky, I'd end up with muddy browns and greens.  That's not what I wanted!

I laid in rich, warm sunset colors. I used the photo for inspiration, and followed my intuition.

I got lost in the process, and forgot to take photos of the finishing steps, but followed the same process as in the mini journal page.  I just had more space to explore the textures of the field, the tool shed, and the old fenceline.  

I encourage you to look through old sketches and journal pages to find something you'd like to develop into a larger painting.  You could ask yourself these questions:

What do I like the most about the sketch?

What would I do differently in a larger artwork?

What are the trouble spots that I will need to take care with?

What's my favorite part of the process?

Would I like to use a different medium (pastel rather than watercolor, ink instead of pencil, etc.)?

Would I like to make a series of artworks from this sketch, changing one feature each time?

When I used to farm, I noticed that planting the first row of anything took the longest.  Once I had established a process, I fell into a rhythm of working, making subsequent rows easier.  The same principle works in making a series of artworks.

This process has reminded me how much I love to exaggerate nature's colors, and how pleasing to my eye complimentary color schemes are.  The orange sunset against the deep blue hills draws my eye in, and I enjoy the dance of the wiggly tree limbs just left of center.

I hope you give this process a try and discover what you most enjoy about painting and sketching.

Happy Creating!

Winter Sunset

On an evening hike, I marveled at this sunset.

Back in the warmth of my studio, I made a pencil sketch in my accordion fold nature journal (started here).

I added permanent ink with my Lamy fountain pen

and erased the pencil lines when the ink had dried.

I made a wash of phthalo blue mixed with ultramarine blue for the sky, and mixed ultramarine blue and permanent blue violet to create the distant hills.

After those areas dried, I washed in azo yellow & permanent rose, being careful not to mix yellow paint into the blue sky.  I didn't want any green in my sky.  A touch of permanent blue violet created the distant lavender clouds. 

Phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna made a rich pine green for the midground evergreens.

The dead grass color is a mixture of white gouache and azo yellow.

 Sap green mixed with yellow ochre created a muted green for the grass, and the rest of the scene was completed with a variety of earth tones, including yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and and a dark brown-gray made with ultramarine blue and burnt umber.

I find that lingering on the colors of sunset, and exaggerating the blue violet glow in the hills brings me joy.  

As the artist, you get to find what delights you about a scene, and emphasize it.  What makes you happy to regard?  What would you relish dwelling on?  I hope you paint it!

Happy Creating!

Figure Drawing with Model Emily

We had a wonderful Osher Figure Drawing class with model Emily.  Our focus was finding the colors in the human body.

We began with a series of gestures to warm up.

Emily's elegant twists were a delight to draw.

After our gesture warm up, Emily held a semi-reclining long pose on a red velvet curtain, and the class created pastel drawings of her.

It was wonderful to emphasize the colors I saw, playing cooler tones off of warmer ones.

Many thanks to Emily for her beautiful poses and inspiration! 

Winter Nature Journaling

Turning the page on my new mini watercolor nature journal (begun here), David and I took a hike in the state park lake on a bitterly cold afternoon.  The fresh air was exhilarating, and time in nature is always uplifting to me, no matter what the weather.

We dropped down off the ridge into the shadows along the water, where I made an ink sketch of this lovely, shadowy scene. Bundling up and hiking had kept us warm.

But, my watercolors froze right on the page.  The little dark clumps are where the watercolor iced up into flat crystals in the 27 degree weather.

Back in the studio, I finished the painting from a reference photo. 

I used a white Crayola crayon before painting to create the white-limbed sycamore trees in the background.  The wax acts as a resist, so you can paint right over the area with a light wash and keep the white of the paper.  After the paint dried, I added finer limbs with a Sakura Gelly Roll white gel pen.

I hope you get a chance to go out into nature and revel in the fresh air and the peace of the wild things.

Happy Creating!

New Mini Nature Journal

I've begun a new concertina nature journal made out of 300 lb cold press Stonehenge watercolor paper.

On a cold afternoon in late November, David took his camera bag and I grabbed my mini nature journaling kit, and we popped out to the state park for some creative time.  Being out in the 20-degree weather forced me to draw quickly and finish my art back in the warmth of my studio.

Above is the reference photo I used to help me flesh out my drawing, and below is my mini watercolor kit.

I started with a wet-in-wet wash of ultramarine blue for the sky, then added in tree shapes with ultramarine blue mixed with burnt umber.  Yellow ochre created the general rock color.  You can see where my impatience in not waiting to let the sky dry before I worked in the trees caused some of the colors to bloom into each other.  I decided to leave it that way and not scrub out the "mistake."

I added some roots with a light gray Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayon.  I like the way those crayons work right over top of darker values, and you can move the pigment with water if you like.

A final wash of burnt umber and ultramarine blue mixed to make a chocolate brown bark color to darken the main tree trunk.  I used a very dark mixture of the two to create the grooves in the bark.

Working small and quickly creates a magic of its own, allowing you to focus in on one small portion of the larger scene.  

I hope you give mini journals a try!

Happy Creating

Bubble Planner

Another week, another weekly planner page! 

 

This week's inspiration came from looking at a variety of jar lids and other round items, and wondering what the page would look like if I traced them.  

I traced them with a pencil, then used India ink and a brush to create bubbles and swirls.  

I simply followed my intuition.

I recommend tuning into your intuition as a practice.  

 Kindly ask yourself what to do next in your art, and listen to the soft voice of your intuition -- not the noisy, judgmental voice of your inner critic, but the quiet suggestions that often sound unusual, unexpected or downright weird.  

Try those things.  

It's only paper, and you can make wonderful discoveries. 

It helps you to learn to trust your own artist's voice.

 Happy Creating!

Bluebird Art Hike Day

I took advantage of a lovely day out in my EV Bluebird, and hiked the state park with my mini art kit.

I sat down on a log and laid in a pencil sketch.  Before I could layer on permanent ink, I noticed a tick crawling up my leg.  Yikes! I brushed the tick away and snapped a photo of the scene in front of me so I could finish my art at home. 

Back in my studio, I added ink with a Lamy Safari fountain pen, then began adding a in washes of color.

Mixing phthalo blue and burnt sienna created the evergreen foliage, ultramarine blue for the sky, and a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna or burnt umber made the greys in the trees.  Burnt sienna and yellow ochre filled the forest floor with leaves, and sap green and yellow ochre created a moss color.

The crooked little sapling caught my eye from the moment I sat outside in the park, so I saved that tree for last and treated it lightly.

Comparing the photo to the painting, you'll see plenty of "artistic license" being used.

Remember that as the artist, you get to decide what to include in your artworks, and you can emphasize angles as I did with the little sapling here.  

You can make choices based on what you'd like to see in the composition and leave out trees or other elements as you choose.

I enjoyed keeping one light colored tree that caught my eye while I was sketching.  There are some things a photograph can't convey.  I'm glad I made a pencil sketch first to capture that fresh feeling you get from creating art from life.

Happy Creating!