A bit of Colour

Here is a bit of colour to lighten your day, I know It has lightened mine.

I am sorry I haven’t been blogging as much as usual, I have been having issues with my health – Rheumatoid Arthritis.  My hands are letting me down big time and many days I can’t do art.  However, I did manage to do these two small gouaches over the last fortnight.

Have a happy Paint Party Friday, (even though its Saturday here!)

 

PPF and FFF - Calm in the Storm

The challenge 5 for Fall, Fearless and Fly. The prompts were:

Headline Prompt:  Lifelong Fan:  What or who have you consistently valued or looked up to in your life?  What lessons have you learned from people you admire?
Color Prompt:  Your favorite color now or from childhood or both!
Quote Prompt: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can:  all of them make me laugh."  W.H.Auden

Today, I am using the first two prompts. The colours in this piece are purple, a colour I have like all my life and red which is a new found favourite (since the second prompt when we were asked to use a colour we least liked)

 I struggled with this as I do not have a person that I have admired throughout my life, I have admired people for periods of time and something then comes up to show me, they are a mess just like me. I don't stop liking them, but, they are no longer on that pedestal that I had placed them. So it shows something about me, rather than them. I am now very careful not to do that anymore! So I started thinking about qualities of the people I admire, Humour was high up there. But humour can sometimes be very cruel.

Time was ticking by and I had almost decided not to do this prompt, when a very busy and chaotic few days, made me recall, a particular friend I had at Polytechnic. She was always calm even in the midst of crazy student life. Pamela was from Taiwan and her English was not 100 per cent and people put her quietness down to that. I was not so sure, so I asked her one day, “How come she was so relaxed and calm amongst us lot?” He reply was the quote by Buddha in the picture above. She said she was Buddhist and mediation helped to center her. Yes, I have always admired people who keep their cool in a crisis. It is something I aspire to. I can appear to calm on the surface, but there is a nasty storm inside! So I want to learn to be like the quote below, calm inside when there is a storm on the outside. (Blues and turquoise are close seconds in the favourite colours list.)

This week has been stormy for me, I would like to think that I kept my calm throughout. So thanks Pamela, even though we have different faiths, both will help us cope with the slings and arrows of life.

The first piece is acyclic (text added in Photoshop) and the second is an oil painting done earlier in the year with text and embellishments added in Photoshop.

Have a happy PPF day everyone.

Linking to

Paint Party Friday

Fall,fearless and Fly

Pyromania and Imagination

Way back in September I brought some gouache paints and I have only used them a couple of times. This week I felt like splashing around with bright colours. So thought it a great opportunity to experiment with them. I just filled the palette with colours and with large brushes set to. This was the result.

The more I looked at the page I thought it reminds me of the bonfire I had a couple of days ago. I had heaps of weeds and prunings from my tidy up of a couple of weeks ago and went out very early (6am) before anyone had washing on their lines and made a giant heap and set it alight! Needless to say it became rather scary! The flames were about my height, so I chucked a lot of damp weeds on and the plume of smoke spiraled into the sky. I was waiting for the fire brigade to turn up in response to a complaint from the neighbours. I also hoped that the fire restrictions hadn't started. The fire was so hot that I managed to burn everything quite quickly and by 7.30 it was a gentle trickle of smoke, phew! I must have had the memory of the bonfire on my mind when I was playing with the paint as this background is calling out to be a picture of my pyromaniac behaviour. (I found out today the fire ban starts next week!)

The next piece is also done in gouache with acrylic finishing touches, I have to admit that I did the text in Photoshop as I wanted to post this today and doing text by hand takes ages. I realized that I have not done any journal pages for a while and horror of horrors no faces for a bit. I love drawing and painting faces, They are always from my imagination, if I had to do representational portrait I think I would struggle. The weirdest thing is that often people think that my picture is of someone they know. Its their imagination! I love letting my imagination flow there are always so many possibilities in life.

I firmly believe that creativity and imagination are hand in hand. So my lovely Paint Party Friday artists what is your imagination creating this week, no doubt I will see when I visit you. Happy PPF!

Linking to Paint Party Friday

Ladies, girls and flowers

A real mix this week for Sunday Sketches, a very productive week if somewhat emotional if you read my last post, you will know what I mean. One thing that lightened my mood was a conversation I overheard on the bus. Two elderly ladies talking about a gentleman friend, one of them finished the conversation on the subject with the quote opposite, it made me smile and still does. Our desire for love never leaves! In this picture I did a drawing in ink and then scanned and simply painted the colours in photoshop.

 

 I think this girl is asleep or floating on her back in the swimming pool,anyway she looks miles away from where she is.

This is really a doodle on one layer using a rubber tool over a layer that I marbled from a lot of scribbles in a KTP plug in. I used natural brushes and dry brushes to get the textured lines.

I absolutely love flowers. I think because they can produce some of the most amazing colours – I think that you will guess by now I am crazy about colour. Again this was in Photoshop here I used water paint brushes and squiggles to make the painting sing. I just wish I could produce oil paintings like this. I think I will make that my goal for the coming year.  I just looked at the three together, PINK! I must be in a girly mood.  Well the next painting gets away from pink.  Well, nearly!

This is the scripture I am taking into the coming week, the painting I did a little while ago using palette knife, lovely thick gooey paint yum!

Since I started my art blog a month ago, I have seen some amazing work, keep it up everybody it is inspiring. Have a lovely week creating.

Linked to Sunday Sketches

Rahab

I want to thank you all for your kind comments last week. My arthritis is heaps better this week. However, I have not been able to paint this week as I have had to catch up on my illustration work. Ive managed to do my Alice series. albeit in pencil, and the Women of the Bible series which was in pencil anyway. So it has been a drawing week. I was so pleased with my loosening up that for Sunday Sketches I decide to do an exercise we did at Polytech in life classes.

 

The exercise involves drawing with the left side of the brain. Do do this you don't look at your drawing, but at the subject and you draw with the opposite hand that you normally use. For me that is my left hand. Since I didn't have a live model, I decided to draw with my eyes shut while imagining a character. (Alright, I admit to having a peek from time to time!) The character I chose to think about was Rahab, a woman prostitute who lived in Jericho. She sheltered two Israelite spies from the King of Jericho. She asked them to save her family when the Israelites attacked. Because she had hidden them she and her family were saved. One of the lessons from this story is that God looks kindly on all who help his followers and has faith, it is what in your heart that matters more than what you are.

 

 

Next, I photographed the drawing which was on A2 paper and done in conte chalk. Then in Photoshop I used Levels and the white ink dropper to whiten the background. The next step was to use the magic wand to select various parts and then I coloured them with the brush tool. It pays to save the selection, in case you want to change anything. Then I went to curves and and adjusted colours slightly.

 

I thought the picture showed the 'lady of the night' side of her now I wanted to show the soft side of her.

Back to the original.  Again I used the magic wand and selected all the brown and then used softer and lighter colours. It looked a bit wishy washy so I painted in the background with a chalk brush.

In this picture , I got rid of the man and used brushes to paint Rahab. I wanted her to be the party girl. Hence the bright colours.

In this picture I wanted to show the gentle warm hearted girl that she must have been. 

There you have it. We all have two sides to our nature, often what we see on the outside is not what is on the inside.

Here is the scripture I am taking with me into the coming week. Thanks for visiting and have a great week creating. 

Linked to Sunday Sketches

 

 

Colour, Glorious Colour

Colour is very important to me, I love bright strong colours, and when I find that I am using subdued colours or doing a lot of black and white work, I find I need to break out! This is what I have done this week for Sunday Sketches

The work I have being doing on the Alice series and some b & w illustrations for a children's book this week have left me hungering for colour. These days my breakouts are digital, I use my tablet and just let go.

It been really wet and cold this week so I thought I would bring in a bit of summer! You can imagine that they are at the beach can't you.

One thing I like with digital work is that you can create colours that don't get muddy, with paints when you mix paints it is ever so easy to get mud! Well I do. Perhaps that's why I like pastels, you seem to be able to get purer colours.

As colorful as a rainbow that appears after a storm. I realized I was seeing the brightness of the LORD's glory! Eze 1:28 CEV

Linked to Sunday Sketches