Posted in drawing

A Little Something to Start the Month

Well, it seems I have become much slower at posting to this site during the past month. I have no thoughts on the cause of this, except to say that I stayed busy all month, just not on activities that fit into the Daily Fiber Fun theme.

To kickstart my blog for December, let me introduce my family’s newest artist.

Laura Lucille, Age 3

During our recent visit with the family, my daughter confided to me that Laura Lu would very much enjoy making art with her grammy.

It was true. I only got her started with a few techniques in drawing with crayon and painting with watercolor. After that she wanted to make art nearly every day.

The last day of our visit, she made this one.

According to the artist, this is a playground. Gramps and I liked it so much, we asked to keep it. That request gave the artist pause. Would she part with her work, or not? After a few moments of deliberation, she agreed that we could take it home.

What followed next was a small flood of playground drawings, all of which were given to us. According to her mother, when bedtime came, the artist insisted on taking crayons and paper to bed with her, because she didn’t want to stop drawing.

Have I actually become a role model for the next generation? It feels great.

Posted in painting

Friday Finished Object: Watercolor

Lindsay Weirich, the Frugal Crafter, recently produced a tutorial showing how to use granulating pigments to create texture in watercolor paintings.

Get the Most from Granulating Colors (you already have!) Watercolor Techniques Video! ‹ The Frugal Crafter Blog ‹ Reader — WordPress.com

I loved the tutorial and wanted to try her technique. But I had in mind a landscape. Specifically, I wanted to paint mountains.

One of the artists I follow is Mitch Zeissler. He posts photographs taken over the past ten or so years using a Leica 35mm film camera. The one I have in mind is a black and white picture of the Madison Range in Montana.

South Along the Madison Range – ÆtherPx (aetherpx.com)

What attracted my eye were the lines of the landscape. They drew a series of enclosed planes that could be filled with a variety of granulating colors in a wide range of values.

Once I had worked through that step, I painted the foreground with some imagined animals and prairie grasses. Today it was finished.

Thank you, Lindsay and Mitch for sharing your work and stoking my creativity.

Posted in painting

This week in #Worldwatercolormonth

Here is a small gallery of the paintings I did in response to World Watercolor Month daily prompts.  In viewing the images, you will notice that I discovered my orange paint this week.

070620 Flow

070720Free2

070820 Fall

07920 Fruit

071020Fast

 

071120

I’m happy today, also, because I received a delivery of art supplies, including white opaque paint, better known as Gouache.  Next week I will see what it can do.

Have a good week-end.

Posted in knitting

[Self] Censorship

Self portrait

This week blogger Sharon Mann’s post of masked women reminded me that I wanted to make a fiber piece on this same theme. The idea of self-censorship pokes into my brain from time to time. When does one decide to speak no more? Am I adding to the rattling noise of empty voices flooding the air? Am I speaking just one sentence too long? Is anyone listening? Or are we all talking to and about ourselves?

Then there is another take on the phrase: It could be : Say, “No More!” It’s time to demand that indifference and injustice cease.

To see Sharon’s work, visit: https://makeartmagichappens.com/2019/05/22/anonymous/

Later…. I shared this fiber object with my friend Kathy. She allowed her photo to be taken wearing the mask.

She also had some good suggestions on how to make this mask into one that could actually be used by people who need to wear them for health reasons.