W.I.P.

Well a very sniffy hello to all my arty, bloggy friends!  Yep I tucked myself up on the couch most of the day with the lovely Tam and her tutorials having woken up with a sore throat and the sniffles!  Lovely Man disappeared off to practice ballroom dancing on his own and then, bless him, he went to the cat rescue and did my hour of volunteering!  What a yummy man eh?  So anyway having watched the tutorial my creativity started to get the better of my cold and I took off down to the studio for some painting therapy!

Last night I had Gesso'd a canvas which was now dry and ready.  I re-sketched me from yesterday having studied Tam's instructions.  Keep it simple, make the eyes larger, mouth smaller and so on.  I also finally worked out, again with a little help from Tam, how to get the background effect I had been longing for!  Gee Whizz I am so glad it's easier than the methodology I'd concocted!  Lesson here is watch the tutorial BEFORE you start!  So...it's not finished yet but I have had to leave it to dry off a bit before I can go to the next stage, and well Lovely Man deserves a little attention for being so nice doesn't he?  

Ok  progress so far...

An Experiment

Today I did my usual little bit of blog hopping and stumbled upon Cathy's latest post.  I too had signed up for Heart of Art, with Tam but as yet had not gotten round to doing anything.  The last two days I have met a creative block, two projects I had in mind were proving difficult for various reasons.  One project is something I simply sorta made up in my head but like all experiments things didn't work quite how I planned and I found I needed to put it to one-side until I was able to get to town again to get supplies.  The second one didn't even get to the experimental stage simply because when i found out what I needed to acheive the desired result I didn't have those either!

original photo of me!

Downhearted I started to watch one of Tam's tutorials, if i couldn't do what I wanted then at least I could learn something.  So inspired by what I watched I started to sketch a whimsical style face from a picture of me on the wall.  I quite liked the sketch and decided maybe I would try out some water color crayons I had been given.  Not wanting to waste my last canvas if it didn't work I decided to do it on watercolor paper.  i have used the crayons before but not properly with water.    A couple of hours later i emerged with this, feeling quite pleased!  It's not 'finished' by a long stretch but I am fairly happy with what I've learned from this piece:1. maybe next time try over Gesso on canvas; 2. be a little more confident with the crayons and the layering; 3. watch Tam's tutorial again to make sure there's no technique I've missed!  Of course I haven't even started the background, that's for the next one!  Also not sure of proportions, not quite right, but again next one!

First draft!

So...Thank you Cathy for inspiring me and thank you too to Tam for her lovely tutorials!  What a lovely lot of arty bloggy friends we have!