Category: Art Day

May 20, 2015

Art Day: Sisters, Sparkles & Packing Tape

One of the joys of my week is Art Day every Sunday at our house. My sister Shannon and I spend a few hours at the kitchen table, exploring, creating and having a wonderful time. This week was extra special because my sister Suzie is in visiting from Vancouver and we were able to all create together!

All three of us are taking Year of the Spark with Carla Sonheim & Lynn Whipple. We got out all of our supplies and dove into Packing Tape 101, a lesson from Carla.

I found it surprisingly fun to paint on packing tape!

Perhaps the greatest delight of the day was seeing how everyone’s personal style came out in their creations. Here’s Shannon’s, which includes this awesome cosmic dog on the right!

Suzie used food as her inspiration and came up with these beauties. I love the way the one on the left captures her sense of cute and street at the same time!

And I think I must have been inspired by my recent visit to the Emily Carr exhibit! She and I share a love of trees.

The upcoming Full Strawberry Moon is all about delight. Clearly we’re feeling her influence already!

May 4, 2015

Art Day: Music, Mediums & Flowers

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. My sister Shannon and I are both taking The Year of the Spark with Carla Sonheim & Lynn Whipple. This week we worked on Lynn’s lesson about allowing our marks, in several different mediums, to be inspired by music. We drew and painted to everything from the Vikings soundtrack to Jessie J to Edith Piaf and had a fabulous time!

April 13, 2015

Art Day: Love & A Trip to the Garden

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. My sister Shannon and I are both taking The Year of the Spark with Carla Sonheim & Lynn Whipple. This week we continued working on a lesson from Carla that we started last week. Using gesso, we had painted a simple, textured piece on wood board. This week, we added colour!

Of course, the glitter bombed animals looked on, some wondering when they would get a second coat.

With this project, we had layers of paint that needed drying and so we took a break out in the garden and discovered: green!!!

The netting I put down to protect the spring bulbs seems to have worked.

Or maybe it was the garden guardian that did the trick.

Either way, when I returned to my piece, I was definitely feeling the love!

April 7, 2015

Art Day: Painting on Wood, Textured Gesso & Practicing Faces

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. This week we dove into another wonderful lesson from Carla Sonheim & Lynn Whipple’s Year of Spark. We’re making a simple gesso and watercolour painting on a wood. It didn’t take long before we were totally immersed and having a wonderful time.

Keeping it really simple was a part of the exercise. I might have gone too far with the word love – but hey, what painting isn’t enhanced by a little love?

It was a lot of fun adding and exploring different textures. The next step will be to add some colour and we’ll likely get to that next week.

The wood block exercise has several stages so in between we practiced drawing faces, something I find wildly intimidating to do! I so love people’s faces and would like to find my way of adding people to my creative work and so I’m trying to gently show up and give it a try. I even made a dedicated journal for the practice. I’m gathering faces – photographs, magazine images, masks, illustrations, and then letting my hand follow the lines and shapes.

Very quickly I discovered that I am most interested in simple shapes, illustrations, sculptures and masks. I love the simplicity and elegance. Now I’m imagining what it would be like to create faces with cut-out shapes instead of with drawing and that’s intriguing to me.

You never know where art day may take you! Once you begin the creative journey, if you’re open to the adventure, the wild road will lead you where it will.

March 23, 2015

Art Day: Stumped by Flowers, Fun with Wire and an Art Journal Background Begins

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. This week we decided to be unstructured and grab whatever project or idea called our name. Shannon explored drawing a Christmas cactus and I bopped around from project to project, starting with taking the next step with my found flowers.

One of the things I am thrilled to be noticing is that as I create more and more work I find that I need less and less to like each piece. Last week I liked what I made. This week, I found myself trying to figure out what I didn’t like and why. It wasn’t heartbreaking. Instead it was (and is) a conundrum I’m working on and that feels like good ground to grow on.

Even so, after a while I was ready to take shift gears and play with animals and wire! I had such a fun and fascinating experience creating Zeb that I was excited to go on another adventure. Which creature-in-waiting wanted to play?

I have no idea what this little beauty will turn into. I just know that she wanted to stand and have a big fin/wing that I’m imagining wrapping with string in some way. One thing I’ve learned with these creatures is to stand back and let them emerge!

I wrapped up with the simple pleasure of starting another art journal page background. This is how I started all of my found flower pieces. I wonder what I will find in here!

March 16, 2015

Art Day: Dreaming of Home

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. This week we got back to painting. This week I was really aware of the impact of a year’s worth of regular painting has had. I feel so much more grounded and ready to play!

And, as you can see – we really play! I never get tired of seeing Shannon’s palette and mine side-by-side. You can always tell whose is whose!

This week I worked on Violette Clark‘s bonus lesson for Life Book. I loved making a magical little home.

We also made a face to be an element of the picture. Though I didn’t end up including it, I really enjoyed making it. I had a lot of fun experimenting with using a toothbrush to paint eyelashes!

I’m so happy with my magical home in the woods.

March 9, 2015

Art Day: Wire, Animals & Aliens

Every Sunday is Art Day at our house. This time instead of paints or Sharpies or glitter, we pulled out wire, fabric and stuffed animals! Thank you, Carla Sonheim for the inspiration.

It was a little intimidating, so we thought maybe it would be good to start small. Shannon and I worked with identical wee frogs.

And then we pulled out the wire.

And suddenly mine wanted to be tall and invite a buddy to play and Shannon’s wanted to have wings.

Then the wrapping began. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard and so long while creating! At this stage I was imagining my guy being a traveling alien musician.

Shannon’s became this wonderful creature with strapped on wings, ready to fly! (or paddle – you should see her feet!)

And mine turned into Zeb.