I am back

Sorry to have been absent so long. Too many things, no access to the computer where I keep my photos to upload, etc., etc.

I couldn't keep up with the Paint & Pixel class. During the middle of it I took a real-life workshop called Painting and Writing in Pieces. I was more intrigued by that one, even though I liked learning to use the Procreate and other art apps.

Here are some photos of work I made that came out of that real-life workshop.

The three photos below are of the first book I made: 1) Resource Book Vol 1 with custom case, 2) detail shot of the binding for Vol 1, and 3) a page from Vol 1 where the torn pieces are attached to the page with the tiniest brads I've ever seen (I love the colors and shapes in each of these 4 small sections of painting. The color palette was muted (all 9 of us students used the same colors): ochre acrylic paint thinned with sizing and diluted sumi ink. All object photos were taken on top of a sheet of marked paper that became some of the pages of Vol 2 below.

I used a brighter palette of watercolor paints (3 primary colors) for Vol 2, which I created at home from large sheets of marked and painted paper brought back from the workshop and new sheets I created over a couple of weeks before I made the book as shown below: 1) Resource Book Vol 2 inside its case, 2) Vol 2 unsheathed showing a different style of binding (using waxed linen threads as in Vol 1), 3) an example page from Vol 2 (I love the inserted watercolor painting torn from the larger sheet).

Below is an image showing four sections of of large sheets of fine 100% cotton paper used for pages (a little lighter weight than the cover paper, still 100% cotton) that I marked and painted over several days, including days at the 5-day workshop.

After marking and painting and writing on the large sheets of paper, we folded and tore the sheets in half over and over again until we had the size of one folded section of the book (I forgot what you call that one piece that is sewn together with 4 or 5 others to create a 'signature' and 4 or more signatures are stitched together to create the book. It was darn fun. 

The point of making a bound and cased Resource Book in the workshop was for each of us to leave with a handmade book that includes many techniques for using paint and writing (including 'invisible' writing using white china markers) to make art. I took that idea to the next level and wrote with china markers (white, black, and red) on some of my paintings and I created new watercolor paintings after finding so many wonderful art hidden inside the one large, not-so-great painting. Here is a photo of one of those large paintings - it is the one I used to make the cover of the book and the case.

I've done the tearing up of larger paintings on paper to make smaller artwork over and over again during the past several years; but, I hadn't really tried it in quite this way before. I was tremendously inspired by the orange-red painting of a rose hip - the nature item I chose as my object focus for the week-long workshop (seen in the bottom right photo of the 2-by-2 collage above).   

MORE about the next-step artwork in the next blog!! 

P.S. I love the work you posted while I was 'away'. I like what you did with the Procreate, too. Have you done anything more with that? I'll show you in another blog post one of the few pixel paintings I did for that online course that I liked; but, it deviated SOOOOO far off from those 'cute' and romantic face paintings everyone else (not you) was doing, I didn't post it. 

procreations

have had almost no time and energy to work on the paint & pixels assignments, fortunately we have been granted life time access :-) 

did you manage to create anything new recently?

i did find some time to try out procreate tho'.....

here's the result

the bare threads of existence

this video shows how the image was created.

did you know you can create videos of all your work in procreate? i love this feature!

and here's a screenshot of my layers-panel

still, i prefer to blend in 'natural' textures, using my own photographs

this is me, standing on the bank of the lake, casting my shadow over the water, with the sun coming from behind, illuminating the undulating water.

i used it to blend in one of my muses

shielded by the shadow of the sun

so how have you been doing? would love to see some of your (pro)creations...!