Color - Lesson 4 - BJ

Color - Lesson 4 - BJ

Moving right along.. I am playing with paints and collage.  Love paint but collage is a challenge for me... but I just blog along hoping someday I will look back and see improvement!

More or Less - Monochrome.

That's what this started out to be, but I only had green tissue paper and some how it just jumped onto the page.  I have to admit using magazine tear outs and pasting them on is really not my thing.  But I was able to put down a couple magazine pieces and I am kind of getting the hang of it.  I added a few pieces of material..

And to tell the truth I pasted very little down because I liked what was under all the paper pieces and am hoping I can do something else with this piece later on.











Analogous Collage - Painting

I work from purple to blue with a tiny bit of green.  My torn piece where painted sprayed with alcohol, then occasionally stamping here and there.  I did paste down all the pieces in this one.   I kind of like the original better because the colors are more muted.  Scanning it seems to intensify the colors.

Self Portrait - Lesson 4 BJ

Self Portrait - Lesson 4 BJ

Collage a Figure as a Self-Portrait

My classmate have been having way too much fun... they really knocked themselves out.  I on the other hand just barely made my posts.




I have to admit at first I really didn't want to do this exercise but after I found a few fashion magazines and viewing all their fun posts I began to tear out body parts in frenzy.  You would think I didn't find much from what I am presenting, but I have a Hugh envelope filled with my paper dolls.

As usual I had to many pieces and began to become overwhelmed and thought I would just skip this one since I am up to my eyeballs getting ready for our local artist coop opening next week.   So I decided to limit myself to a couple and work on the background next week which I think Jane said we would be doing.  This is soooo unlike me.  I usually like to do a lot more than assigned.. Oh well.  I think this might be a good sign that I am giving up my over achier status .. at least for this week.

That's it for now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Self-Portrait - Lesson 3 BJ

Self-Portrait - Lesson 3 BJ

                   Here are my watercolor attempts.


Left:  White crayon with water color wash.
     After a few attempts I was finally able to get a darker wash which then allowed the crayon drawing to show.



Below:  Damped  paper with watercolor drawing
    It was hard to get the right amount of wetness on paper to able to draw.  I found my first attempts to be too dry and sketchy looking.  Then as I experimented more I was able to loosen up the drawing.  I like the fuzzy look, but there is challenge working with watercolor.

Self Portrait - Lesson 3

Letting Go of Looking Good?       You bet!

 

Jane Davies is leading me to overcome the intimidation of drawing the self.  

First by tracing over self-portrait photos and then playing around with blind contour drawing resulting is goofy looking characters displaying multiple personalities I'm becoming comfortable with the whole self-portrait concept.   

The following are the results of exercises I've been working with resulting in loosing up and creating more awareness of line and shape.

Blind Self-Portraits.

I kind though it might be fun to start the drawing from different point on the face.

On the left drawing I began at the left (facing me) eyeglass frame and proceeded from there ending up at the neck.
Then I decided to try drawing just half of the face.. finding in this way the other side didn't overlap with the right as much as before.

Then I started at the hair line and ended up somewhere below the face with perhaps what might be labeled as a tongue or and neck.  Your guess is as good as mind.. but it's kind of interesting.

THE TROLL

Attempting to make two drawings I think I created my personal view of a sweet little troll.   This was fun, but I kind of liked the first drawing before covering it with the second.

Then I drew the right side first and then moving over to the left creating a great illustration for my next thesis on multiple personalities.  I am growing found of my many faces.

Then starting at the throat I seem to bring it all together now.....

or kind of.

But never fear the others are back when the left hand took over, as shown by these two.

 Kind of fun.

Left:    Drew the right side first then another starting on left.



Loved adding water color pencil to these. 

One line drawing with a little peek

 Sharpie Pen Fine

 The Scribble Drawing

Prnag AB pencil

Sharpie Extra Fine Pen

       

Boy.. talk about taking this seriously..

I had a lot more fun than these last three portray.

Jane Davies Color Class - Lesson 2

More postings from my Color class with Jane Davis

 

Lesson 2 - Color wheel - BJ

Where do my fellow classmates find those amazing magazines   used for this assignment? 

I just couldn't find enough magazine sources to use for this lesson, so I used  only a little bit of magazine paper and lots painted paper and fabric stash.  The project was a great help in organizing my fabric stash which was quite a mess.     Once again I found it difficult to get gradations of the blue-violet colors which appears a bit dark. I noticed that at first I trended to bring more shades of each color than needed for a basic color wheel, so I pulled quite a few swatches but perhaps there are more to be pulled.

I used acrylic paint to stamp my painted paper.  I used only a few pieced of  torn magazine paper with most of the paper being painted, stamped with acrylic paint.
The color is not quite and light as show here and .. I just noticed that it is upside down..
Oh well.  I am still learning.

Looks like my red has shown up with more pinks than it truly is.  Also had a bit of a challenge pasting the thinner pieces down.


I can see I need to increase my paper stash if I want to create collages.


 Great exercise!
 

Self Portrait - Lesson 1

Anyhow... here's my process for the first lesson.  After obtaining a photo of myself, I converted it to B&W via Photoshop elements and lightened it.  Looks like I was thinking about how to do this and not very excited about the process.

Then I traced a number of copies on tissue paper of the photo.

 Here I applied the tracing to my my small sketchbook page. Strathmore Drawing medium, 6"x8", 80 lb

Used matt medium to adhere, let dry  and began applying paint, added stamps.. paint... and kind of played.  Not really happy with results... but loved to play.







The drag tool is now working?

These two are done on Biggie Jr Drawing Pad, 90lb.  9"x12"

The tracing was done after some paint application and some collage materials were applied.



I played around with these for many days.. adding paints, stamps, removing paint, covering up and redoing.    I can see that my drawing could have been darker on all the attempts.. but couldn't see it while I was working.  In fact can you find me in the right one?  I hardly can.  Not real happy with the right one... like the colors, but a little too much darkness on the left side.     I am thinking that perhaps I could scan my work and look at it on the computer... I seem to see more clearly than when up close an personal.    Or perhaps just stand back and look... novel idea?

At first I had difficulty in lighting up my paint.. as you can see by this morbid attempt

Then I went a little crazy... such fun.

I really enjoyed the process and am amazed that what I see through the lens of my glasses are not a precise as the camera.....  oh those lines.   But delighted with the opportunity to remake my image.  hee hee.

The beginnings of a NEW ME

I am taking Janes Color class and was pursuing her blog where I noticed her self portrait contour drawing and got so excited that I got out the mirror and began the doing contour drawing.  Such fun, didn't realize how delightful it would be to create a new me. I can't wait to add color for some pizzazz.   In the meantime I think I will make this my image on my site.
  
I maybe a little nuts doing all this at once since I am also frantically trying to figure out the blog system,  learn more about taking pictures, Photoshop, scanning, and posting.

(can't figure out how to get the underling turned off on the above text so I deleted and started over... or to how to get the font to stay in Arial as a default... also had text disappear.. isn't this fun?) 

The above color wheel was made for Jane Davies class ... I am finding out the hardest part is creating secondary and tertiary colors which need a lot of medium added to get the primary color to light and show up well.

So I decided to try graduating the color block by block creating a sort of a grid pattern which was also an assignment in the class.   Kind of like the patterns it made.  Then Jill French, one of the class members, submitted a piece in which she cut the color of the wheel in 1" squares and played around with that.  She said "After this exercise, I have a new found awe and appreciation for Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Mondrian - who generally worked with limited colors and constrained, geometric layouts. It's harder than it looks!!

 

Think I will cut up my grids and play around with this idea

Well here goes.... my first try at blogging inspired by my friend Marny and my first on line class with Jean Davies. 
  

The purpose for this blog is to help me focus on my creative process.  I intend to tract my process posting what I am learning and what I am producing.  Perhaps even touch the depths of my thoughts and feeling during the process........   So  here goes. 


This is a painting I created at a class I took last summer in Bend, Oregon with Karen Rosaco from New York.   


As I was just completing a two year course with Gail Harker Creative Studies Center in La Conner, Washington, this class with Karen helped me bring together the many areas that I had been interested in over many years.   


So here I am continuing on my creative path. I will post what I am doing to help keep me focus on this journey.