Maker Beehive

 Maker Beehive

Another great workshop with a fun, talented instructor: Jennifer Chamberlin. I loved her sense of humor and her relaxed, playful style of creating art and relating to her students. I learned more about techniques I have been using for quite some time such as working in layers, collage, adhesives, and reusing/repurposing. New learnings included the value of considering transparency in layering, underpainting, and a technique of laying down a paper towel over wet acrylic paint to create more of a printed look rather than seeing the brush strokes. One of Jennifer’s signature techniques is rubbing or blotting over a wet acrylic layer with a baby wipe or damp paper towel. Cool way to get a blended effect.



One lesson helped me to realize that I need to do more frequent Zentangle doodling sessions, as we were to doodle inside splotches of paint, and I found myself struggling to come up with a wide variety of doodles. My repertoire is sorely diminished from lack of practice and focus. 

All of these techniques came together in a final project that played with underpainting. I like everything except the little girl figure, which I just couldn’t get quite right. But, hey, it was fun!! 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Happy Couple . . . Meow 🐈‍⬛🐈

Image
Meet the Happy Couple . . . Meow 🐈‍⬛🐈 Cleaning the garage is a chore that we’ve put off for as long as possible, but it did ultimately yield some interesting finds. One of those finds, wrapped in crumbling tissue paper was this little wedding cake topper. Made of crepe paper and wire, the poor couple, headless and drab, definitely needed a new life. They’ve been sitting on my art table for a couple of weeks now, waiting patiently for their makeover. My guess is that their original heads were made of fabric or canvas. (I can hear the Queen of Hearts yelling, “Off with their heads!”) : The closest vintage cake toppers I could find were these  ($60? Good grief!): Because the tag at the bottom indicates that these were bought in Springfield, Ohio, my guess is that they were on Mom & Dad’s wedding cake in 1944. Now that‘s vintage!!  Drawing faces just ain’t my thing, so the poor couple just hung around, waiting, for a long time, as I tried to teach myself to draw. Then, this ...
Read more

New Blog; New Beginnings

Image
  Nearly three years have passed since I last wrote a blog post. Setting up this new blog, I never expected to encounter such a seemingly insurmountable obstacle right off the bat. . . naming the blog. Having tried nearly 28 creative names and finding them all unavailable, this was the first one to stick. So, this is it, and here it goes . . .  The arts have always been a part of my life, thanks mostly to my father who insisted that I play the violin in elementary school and encouraged me to always give school projects some sort of artistic flair. I guess a part of that mentorship was due to his background in music and art. As a gifted artist, sculptor, and industrial designer, he was an amazing role model and our house always had a plethora of varied art supplies. My journey towards art, however, has been a delayed one.  Having abandoned my music major in college, I turned to education. The last couple of years of my 35-year career in public education, I discovered jewe...
Read more

Refocusing: Intentions

Image
  Refocusing: Intentions   Our intention creates our reality. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. ~ Wayne Dyer Countless times art and writing have been the therapies that saved me. In this case, asemic writing and collage allowed me to express the overwhelming disappointment of delayed medical intervention for which I have waited years. To have my hopes so dashed feels like a slap, a cosmic act of Mother Nature. Yet I can refocus and set my intentions. Those intentions, scrawled in gray ink, are the basis for this collage grid. Intentions are the gold, hidden deep in the earth of our hearts but mineable, rewarding, and life-changing. May this gold burst forth and envelope me in rays of hope. 
Read more