Techniques Challenge: Week 25

Our technique challenge for the week is to create a Pop Art piece.

Pop Art is one of the most easily recognizable modern art forms. Here are some of the most famous pop art pieces:

Andy Warhol’s  Campbell’s Soup Can

Roy Lichtenstein’s Brilliant Works

James Rosenquist’s  House of Fire

Pop Art includes images from modern culture.  Advertising, comic books, household items, commonly seen things from everyday life.  It takes these very mundane images and transforms them into something truly delightful.  Our challenge is to choose a commonly seen image from our daily life and transform it into a Pop Art piece.

This art movement is one of my favorites.  I hope you enjoy creating your own Pop Art this week.

Word of the Month Challenge: July

Our monthly word challenge has so far included:

1. New
2. Inspire/Inspiration
3. Broken
4. Change
5. Gratitude
6. Joy

Our word for the month of July is strength.

This word doesn’t necessarily mean physical strength.  It can mean any form of strength.  Getting through tough situations, dealing with physical challenges, caring for someone with special needs, spiritual strength, mental toughness…

Strength can be many different things.  How you want to include strength in your art is entirely up to you.  As always, relax and enjoy the creative process.  Our focus is on the creating, not necessarily the end results.  Stretch your self artistically-try new techniques, use unfamiliar materials, challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone.  But most of all, have fun!

Daily Art Challenge: July 1

Our challenge for today is to use gel medium in our art.

Gel medium can be used to thicken any acrylic paint to the point you can do impasto techniques easily.  It makes acrylic paint more translucent, which is great for glazing.  It works well for collage and gluing down heavier items on a multi-media piece.

This is one of my most used supplies in my work room.  I use it on nearly every art journal layout as well as multi-media canvases.  Give gel medium a try and see what you can do with it.

Daily Art Challenge: June 30

Spray inks is our challenge for today.  Here’s a post explaining how to make your own DIY spray inks if you don’t have any on hand.

Spray inks are great for all over color, through a stencil, as a background, to unify your page or canvas, as an antiquing technique-there are so many ways you can use these sprays!

Have fun!

Bare-Bones Basics

This has been a week of soul-searching and contemplation.  I have been evaluating my own work, why I make it and if I even like any of it.  The results have been rather startling.

The truth is, I have been making stuff to sell not because I like it.  Which means I have been trying to figure out what the buying public might want to spend money on.  This has nothing to do with the reason I actually make art. The result is I have lost touch with who I am as a creative being and I desperately need to find that person again.  If you’re feeling lost creatively, let’s work together to find our way back to our authentic, artistic self.

Let’s ask and answer a few fundamental questions:

1. What is your motivation for creating?
2. What is your favorite art medium?
3. Where do you find your inspiration?
4. What gives you a feeling of excitement and anticipation when you think about making art?
5. Is there a particular subject you’re drawn to?
6. Are there specific techniques or colors you go back to again and again?
7. Is there a particular art style your drawn to?  How does it work with your own style?
8. Do you know what your art style is?
9. Are you easily bored?
10. Is there anything you make that has received a lot of compliments?

Now let’s answer some of these questions:

1.  What is your motivation for creating?  Well, my motivation is artistic expression and the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment I get when I’m making something.
2. What is your favorite art medium?  Mine is paint.  I like to paint, I know a lot about paint, I’m good at painting.
3. Where do you find your inspiration?  I usually find inspiration in nature.  Although I have found inspiration in new art materials, photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, quotes, bible verses and song lyrics too.
4. What gives you a feeling of excitement and anticipation when you think about making art.  Honestly, very little lately.  I have a couple watercolor paintings I want to make and a mixed-media canvas painting, but other than that I’m not excited about much.
5. Is there a particular subject you’re drawn to?  I seem to make a lot of paintings with flowers/nature.  But I am drawn to steampunk images, abstracts, impressionist paintings, everything VanGogh and mixed-media work.
6. Are there specific techniques or colors you go back to again and again?  Yes.  Acrylic painting and COLOR!  I love vibrant, bold color-doesn’t matter what colors as long as they’re in-your-face bold.
7. Is there a particular style you’re drawn to?  Yes and no.  I admire and appreciate many styles of art.  Fauvism used vibrant color in a way I love, Impressionism is also very close to my heart.  In both these movements, bold use of color is one of the key factors.  I suppose Impressionism is closest to my natural style.  I prefer vague lines and images rather than very detailed and precise.
8. Do you know what your style is?  Somewhat.  I feel my style is ever evolving as I become better at some techniques and discard others I no longer care for.
9. Are you easily bored?  Yes I am.  I cannot make the same thing over and over again.  I have to have variety and change.  I may paint a few watercolors in a row, but they will be different subjects.  Or I may paint a very detailed acrylic painting and then switch to dirty pours.  Every day is a new adventure, as I have no idea what I might be in the mood to do.
10. Is there anything you make that receives a lot of compliments?  Yes.  My paintings always illicit a positive response.

Well, there you have it.  My answers to some of the bare-bones basic questions we creatives need to ask ourselves.  Where we go in our art practice and how we do that is entirely up to each one of us.  If our art is made for personal satisfaction and fulfillment, then that’s how we should look at the work we produce.  Were we enjoying the process?  Was there satisfaction with ourselves for giving it a try-no matter the final result?  Does creating fulfill a fundamental need within us?  Is the fulfillment we get from making art enough for us?  Would we create even if we had no art supplies?

Again, we need to understand why we create and what we expect to receive from it.  I get satisfaction and enjoyment from making things.  I also get a great deal of satisfaction from teaching classes.  Perhaps my area of focus should be teaching others ways to express themselves through art.

It’s a thought.

 

Great Warm-Up Technique

I suppose this should be a Haul! post, as I’m talking about a book I found at Ollie’s-the discount store in Ann Arbor.

The book is the Official Vampire Artist’s Handbook by Lora S. Irish.  

I should mention drawing and sketching are not my “thing”.  I usually do my sketching with my paint brush.  I rarely draw in an image before I paint, I just paint it.  But drawing is a skill I am developing and practice makes perfect.  And this book gave me lots of inspiration!

Now, I did not purchase this book to draw vampires.  I bought the book (for .99 cents) because the images have the flavor of steampunk.  This is a style I really love and have been thinking about a lot lately.  The vintage/Victorian feel of the art as well as the funky combination of science fiction and fantasy is so me.

On the way home from my treatment I began sketching some of the images I found in the book.  In ink, in a moving car, over Michigan pot-hole filled roads.  And surprisingly enough, they turned out really well.  It was great fun to draw this way and I’ve done several more sketches since returning home.

This is similar to a technique I’ve used several times in the past. It’s one of my favorites for warming-up.   Simply choose your image, place your inkpen down on the paper, and doodle the image without lifting the pen.  You doodle until the image is finished.  This often takes no more than a few minutes.  I have a sketchbook dedicated to this type of drawing.  I use all sorts of images and the more often I do this the better my eye sees shapes and tonal values within my subject.

Another technique I’ve used is to draw an image upside down.  This helps me to see shapes rather than focus on what the image actually is.  I don’t see a house with a barn and silo, I see rectangles, squares, triangles and circles.

While drawing isn’t an absolutely essential skill to an artist anymore (there are ways to get the image you want down on your substrate without drawing it yourself) it does make sense to give some time and effort to mastering sketches of simple images.  Even printing an image and drawing over the top of it will help you learn to sketch more accurately.

And, as always, observation of your subject is the key to success.  The artist starts with the rough shapes and adds the details as the drawing progresses.  The beginner always seems to start with the details first and then tries to fill in around them.  By starting with the location of the head, body and limbs- for example-you can see almost instantly whether the image is off.  It’s very easy to correct at this point, which will greatly reduce your frustration.

Take some time to draw.  Keep a small, inexpensive pad of paper with you along with a couple pencils and an eraser.  When you’re waiting in the doctor’s office, at your kids dance practice, on hold with the insurance company-sketch what you see around you.  Draw cylinders and spheres.  Start simply and move on to more complicated images as you improve.

I’ve often talked about your “artist tool box” which is simply the skills and techniques we master.  Once we know them, we “own” them.  They are available for our use at any time, in any project.  Drawing is one of those skills we would all like to have in our tool box.  If it’s not one of your skills-and it’s not one I’ve mastered to my satisfaction either-these simple techniques can help you.  We may never be the best in the world, but we can certainly improve our abilities with practice.

Free Art Lessons from Jerry’s Artarama

 

Daily Art Challenge: June 29

The challenge today is to use shades of white.  Whites, pale grays, beiges, these all work for this challenge.

By using different textures and materials, you can create some really beautiful art with different whites.  Wood, dry brushed pale gray, gives you a worn drift-wood feeling.  A bunch of brightly colored elements together on a page become cohesive with a wash of white gesso over everything.  This mutes the colors to subtle, paler versions of the originals while leaving the patterns and textures showing.  (This is one of my favorite ways to bring a page together that isn’t quite working for me.)

Whites can create beautiful, romantic art with the use of lace, fabrics, beads and trims.  There is a natural richness and elegance with the use of whites.  Add a soft accent like sage or peach if you want a bit of color.

Daily Art Challenge: June 28

The challenge for today is to use a rust technique in our art.  Here are a couple easy ways to add the look of rust to your work:

1.  Layers of paint.  Begin with dark brown.  Paint the entire area you’re rusting.  Now use a sponge-ripped and jagged or a sea sponge- and randomly daub a reddish color over 3/4ths of the area.  Turn and alter your sponge area so you don’t make patterns.  Now use a lighter shade of brown and daub over 1/2 the area.  Use the sponge always changing the edge so there is no pattern.  Next use a turquoise or sage green and daub sparingly and randomly a quarter or less of the entire area.  If you want, you can add a very small amount of copper or bronze metallic with the sponge after you add the turquoise/green.
2. mix the above colors into separate mounds of texture paste.  Use a palette knife or stiff bristled brush to add to your project in similar amounts as the above method.  This is really textured and great for focal images or words.
3. Use ink pads in colors similar to those mentioned above.  Smear over page or tag.
4. Use fluid acrylics or spray inks for similar effects on fabric.
5. Distress Oxides make lovely rust effects.

You can use the rust effects for an entire background or cut out shapes and letters from a piece of chipboard you’ve rusted.  I’ve rusted fun foam and used that for title letters, as roof tiles on wonky houses, cut into leaves, rocks and mountains for a dimensional look on canvas or journal pages.

Rusting techniques are both fun and easy. You really cannot mess them up.  These techniques are great for vintage, steampunk and textural projects.  Play around with them and see which you prefer.

Daily Art Challenge: June 27

Our challenge for today is to spatter paint.  This can be as a back ground or as a finishing touch to a completed art piece.  You can mask off an image and spatter paint over the mask.  Remove the mask carefully to prevent smearing.  I’ve done this a few times and the results are really great.  I prefer simple images like a Christmas tree or a bike.

Another Marathon: June 26

This one is cleaning and purging!

Scott and I left directly for Ann Arbor following the Art Market on Sunday.  Erin helped Laurie unload the van and all the stuff was stacked in the dining room.  Today I went through every tote.   Purged what we didn’t need or what I no longer wanted to sell.  Then reduced those items I do still want to sell.  Repacked everything in logical order and labeled the totes with their contents.  I reduced the number of totes by half.  I may go through them again later and see what else I can pitch.

Even though this took a few hours, I have more to do.  My workroom looks like a tornado went through here.  I have chaos and mayhem everywhere!  My next mission is to get rid of all the unnecessary stuff and clear out some of the good stuff too.  I’m ready to start donating supplies to the local women’s shelter or the City Mission second hand store.  I have more than I’ll use up in my lifetime-might as well donate the extras to a good cause.