Finished Paintings

I spent some time working on paintings this weekend.  Both of my projects from last weekend's art classes are now finished!  Ta-Daaa!

Here is the hollyhock watercolor painting from Karlyn Holman's class at Art of the Carolinas.

There are some elements of collage and mixed media in this piece.  Do you see sort of shadowy images of letters in some of the background areas?  We sanded watercolor pencils over a stencil while the background was wet.  That adds a little bit of interest to the negative space.

Additionally, there are some bits of Japanese paper collaged into the painting.  You add it in while the paint is wet.  When the background painting is dry, you adhere the bits of paper with YES paste.  When you paint over the collaged paper, you get some surprises and some nice color variety.  I like the texture it adds.

And here is Miss Zentangle from Suzanne McNeill's class.  She was almost finished when I last showed her, but she had a bit of nystagmus in the eyes!  I admit to using black felt-tip marker to try to even out the eyeballs and eye shapes.

Did I mention that I have been taking an online art journaling workshop called 21 Secrets?  Lots of great information and ideas.  Here is one that I did for the " I Am Magic" workshop with Andrea Schroeder.  I fooled around with the computer, and magically changed myself into different colors.  Queen of Pandora, maybe?

I also signed up for a free art journal workshop by Tam at Willowing.  It is called Art, Heart, &  Healing. This is a four-lesson workshop that begins with a face painting page.  What an incredibly generous gift to offer this free opportunity to learn new techniques.  You can still sign up and join the other 1100 of us that are taking advantage of these online videos.

Here is my Lesson One.

Let me tell you, this page literally glows!  I stamped with Lumiere gold paint, and did some outlining and doodling with gold leaf pen.  So much fun!

It has been so beautiful here in North Carolina.  The mornings are chilly, the afternoons warm and sunny, the trees still clinging to the last of the bright colorful foliage.  It makes me happy just to walk outside!

                  

Oh, yeah, and my college football team beat our arch-enemy North Carolina yesterday in a thrilling game, making it an almost perfect weekend!