Strathmore Online Workshops- "The Mind of Watercolor"

Once again I am participating online in a free art workshop offered by Strathmore Artist Papers.  This time the theme is The Mind of Watercolor, and the instructor is Steve Mitchell.  Steve has many instructional videos on You Tube.  For the Strathmore workshop, we did a landscape first, and are now working on a botanical painting of a rose.

Here is my finished landscape.

I am finding the rose more difficult.  It requires more precision and taking the time to paint petal by petal.  I have tried two versions for the first layer.

I think the first one is a little dark for the first wash.

The second one is in my watercolor journal  I don't like the drawing as well, but am pretty happy with the first wash of watercolor.

And here is one more Bible art journaling page.  The other side of this page was already painted and lettered with very dark colors that showed through.  I gave this side two coats of clear gesso.  Then I painted mostly with my new Inktense pencils and blended with water.  I added some dark Royal watercolor.  There was still some ink showing through in the yellow sky, so I printed the scripture and added it there.  I was pretty pleased not only with saving this page, but the outcome of the painting.

Paintings Inspired by Gulf Beaches

Today I played with my watercolors, and created two little paintings based on Lido Key, Sarasota, FL.

Lido Key, by Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2015

Shore Bird, by Jeanne Turner McBrayer, 2015

I love going to the beach, and I love painting with watercolors.  It's good to have the opportunity to do both frequently!

Tiny Art

This was a stay-in-Raleigh weekend for us.  Our mountain place got twelve inches or more of snow, so we did not travel up there.  We did some long-overdue tasks around the house, and I found two glass coasters someone had given me for a Christmas gift.  They had display windows to personalize, so I took time out to make title watercolor paintings.  Ten minutes, to be exact!

I made a small painting on a piece of scrap watercolor paper.  I just painted very quickly from memory of all our trips across the Christmas tree farms in the mountains.

Then I cropped two scenes out of the painting for the coasters. Each painting is just over two inches square.

This was really fun!  I might try to get some more of these coasters and make some more.

Catching Up

It has been raining hard off and on for days now.  That actually has given me lots of extra time for my artsy projects!

On Thursday I went to Clayton to exercise my visitation rights on my Gammill machine.  I managed to quilt both my baby quilt and the flower challenge quilt while I was there.

The baby quilt just has loopy meanders with some flowers and maybe a butterfly for fun.  The baby's name is Holly, so I added her name and a holly leaf.

The backing is pieced from leftover fabrics in the quilt and some others that coordinate.

I made a label today, and will try to finish hand-sewing the binding and label tonight.  I'd like to give it to Holly when we are in the mountains for the Fourth of July.

Here is the flower challenge quilt, now that it is quilted.  I did not touch the flower or stem, only the background.  That makes the non-quilted areas pop.  I will be doing some stitching/beading in the flower area.

I did a lot of small, artistic freestyle quilting.  Near the base, feathery ferns. 

I added some quilted leaves along the stem.

Around the flower I just added some spiral swirls.

Next up for this project is to add beads, crystals, embroidery etc. to embellish the flower.

While I was at Maureen's, there was a severe thunderstorm with heavy rain and dark skies.  I finished quilting just as it started to storm, and by the time I traveled home the rain was over.

On my design wall is the beginning of another child's quilt.  I can't really call this a baby quilt because the baby is already three years old.  This one is for our friends, Ricky and Mary's granddaughter Shelby.  I made  quilts for both of her older brothers, but got in a slump on baby quilts a few years ago and could not keep up!  

This one is going to be a sort of I Spy quilt with pairs of blocks with the same center fabric.  Two mermaids, two butterflies, etc.  Hopefully she can make a game of finding the matching pairs.  

All of the center patches have an animal or other novelty print fabric.  Many are left over from the last three quilts I have made for Charlotte, Lucas, and Holly.

In fact, I have so many leftover scraps that I am piecing together scrap quilts for yet another baby quilt.  I have two more to go before I have made one for all the great-nieces and great-nephews.

I keep a basket of scraps by the sewing machine, and when I am in the mood for some mindless sewing, I just stitch the scraps together randomly until I can cut an eight-and-a-half-inch square.  Very relaxing!

I also have been working on two watercolor paintings.  One is another view of the dam at our mountain place, this time from the bridge with dogwood branches reaching over the creek.  

Before, I had a lot of heavy branches above the dam, and did not like the way they looked.  So, I lifted the out by using a "thirsty" brush and going over the areas to remove the paint.  This left a kind of ghostly effect, not unlike when the mists rise off the water.  But I am filling back in with some color.

I want to have this one ready to take to Michael's to frame when I pick up the one that is there now.

The other painting is a practice portrait of my granddaughter Lily.  I had a good closeup of her face, so I used her as the subject even though she was in my last portrait, as well.  I want to work on the eyes and the shading a little more, and decide if I want to add some background color.  I already have the same face drawn on another paper, so I will try some different color tones for that one.  

Tomorrow we are going back to the mountains for the Fourth of July.  We have a big group gathering there. Lots of children, grandchildren, and friends.  We are looking forward to it...and hope that the BIG RAINS will be over by then.  Charlie and I went up last weekend to do some preparations since we had not been up there in a month.  It was lovely and cool.  We enjoyed watching my sister Katy and her husband Kenny feed the fish in the pond, the pigs, the chickens, and the goats. 

 And of course, the ride over the Christmas tree farms in the Gator is always a highlight.

After running up there, my dog Kasey looks like a lion lying in the savanna of Africa.

Guess that's it for now!  My art quilt bee met yesterday, but I will save that report for another post.

Thinking Like an Artist

Today I hosted the monthly meeting of the Anything Art quilt bee.  I decided that I would share some of the knowledge I have gained from taking so many of Pamela Allen's online art quilt classes.  This task was simplified immensely by showing parts of Pamela's DVD, Think Like an Artist. 

She goes through her improvisational process of composition, shows how she embroiders and prepares for machine quilting.  Then there is an extensive section on how she chooses and attaches her embellishments.  Great fun, and we may have an embellishment swap at our next monthly meeting!


I had instructed everyone to bring a small piece of batting and a piece of dark, medium, and light valued fabric for the background.  After watching the first part of the video, we got to work creating backgrounds and then adding shapes.  The ladies did a good job of getting started on a piece of fabric art.


Peg wanted to try a composition similar to this Monet scene on a Christmas card at the left of the photo.  She may make it more snowy when she gets home to her stash and has more white fabric.

Roberta created a still life utilizing some striped fabric.  I showed her how to add some dimension to the vase a la Pamela by altering the direction of the stripe.

Ruth-Ellen put together this very charming house and yard with perky fabric prints.

Toni was working on a landscape that was showing a lot of promise.



While the gals were working at their compositions on my kitchen table,

I got lunch ready.  I served light, medium, and dark fabric scraps on one side of the counter, and baked ziti and salad on the other side!  Nothing like a fabric/salad bar!

Peg brought a book with beautiful Caribbean photographs.  I took one look at this lady's portrait and just had to take a picture of that page.  (Sorry about the flash reflection on her face.)

The reason is because I had already started a portrait quilt of a bodacious lady and could not decide how to finish her.  Several of the participants in Pamela Allen's workshops challenged ourselves to make a woman's face that was full of personality.  The portrait in the book reminded me of my lady.  Now I think I have an idea!  Doesn't my WIP portrait remind you of the one in the book?

 

Look out lady, you are probably getting a turban and some dreads!

Last year when I hosted, we worked on a watercolor painting lesson, using many of the techniques that I learned in a Karlyn Holman watercolor class at Art of the Carolinas.  Ruth-Ellen never finished hers, so she brought it along  We were working on a simplified drawing of hollyhocks.  Here is the one that I did at AOC.

I have actually painted the hollyhocks four times now.  To help Ruth-Ellen with the leaves and flowers, I quickly drew some similar shapes and painted them on a plain sheet of watercolor paper with no background.  How very different the flowers look without the juicy background!

Maybe I will add some background color or negative painting.

It was a very fun day with friends!