Art GCSE

In the absence of any other artwork I thought I would share some of the stuff I've been doing with my daughter. She has started her GCSEs this year and is doing art. We were discussing it one day and before I knew it I was agreeing to work alongside her doing the same homework and as much of the classwork that I can given that I don't have the classroom resources! First up, in class, she was presented with a copy of the painting, Woodcutter by Kasimir Malevich, see below.



The task was to reproduce all or part of the painting on an A3 spread using oil pastels. This is my finished piece:



It's not something I've done before and despite feeling quite unskilled at using oil pastels once I got going I really enjoyed it! ;o)

We're working on coursework entitled "Figure and Space" this next piece is a 15 minute observational drawing of my husband, not that you'd know it was him! LOL



After this I had to do a 3 minute drawing of him without removing the pencil from the page and also not looking at the what I was doing! Good fun! And that was followed by a 3 minute drawing holding the pencil right at the very top, like a paintbrush. Now I have homework to complete that involves using some previously sourced pictures of figures in movement to draw or paint a piece based on one of them which shows movement. Eek! Still thinking about that one! ;oD

It's all great fun and hopefully is encouraging for both of us. :o) I think I'm going to be tackling all sorts of things that I wouldn't necessarily have tried which is all grist to the prospective artist's mill.

Symbols Piece

On my Yahoo group we recently had a symbols swap. Each player supplied a list of symbols they use regularly in their artwork and then another player made a piece of artwork in their own style but using someone else's symbols. Does that make sense?? I was working on my piece when FIL died and have been somewhat blocked ever since. I had several attempts at different pieces before finally getting to what would become my actual swap piece! I think I just had a mental block on it because after FIL died I wasn't doing much, if any, art for a good while and when I came back to the piece I just felt completely stymied whenever I looked at it. Fortunately the fog finally lifted yesterday and here it is:




I managed to use seven of the twelve symbols on my partner's list;

greens, golds, going on yellow or brown (brown vintage tablemat, yellow sardine tin lid, hanging trim)
poetry quotes (lines from a Longfellow poem)
rectangles (sardine tin)
chequerboard effect (metal mesh)
triangles (Blakies)
stars (gold stencilled stars on base, metal star on sardine tin)
dots (copper nails)

Art Doll

I've been participating in an art doll swap on my Yahoo group and this is mine. She started life as a fork and I gave her a restyle by bending the tines. ;oD Her "dress" is copper and blue wires just wound around, very therapeutic activity! After some tinkering about I managed to attach her clock face! Her arms are copper wire with plastic beads that have seen better days but I felt they suited my doll much better than shiny new ones. Her legs are one of my soldered vintage fuses and part of an earring. Once she was finished I decided to mount her onto something and so she reposes on a big piece of tringular metal that I liberated from the shed! I couldn't get a decent shot of the entire piece as the flash kept bouncing off the metal so this is just the actual doll portion, not a brilliant pic but hopefully you get the idea!

Women in Art Video

Check out this cool video on YouTube. I loved it! ;o)

Sketches

Just a couple of pages from my sketchbook on holiday. Last year I drew (well, tried to! Who remembers the sheep with a wooden leg?? LOL) alot of sheep, this year the theme has been boats!

Photos

I thought I would share a few pics from my holiday. There's some more normal holiday pictures here too!





A couple of sand pattern pics. I took several on Red Wharf Bay beach and could have taken loads more! The patterns were all great and the late afternoon sunshine fell just right on the sand.





These are close ups of a weathered anchor at Amlwch harbour. I do, as you know, have a passion for rusty metal! ;oD



On one of our walks we passed the church of St Eilian in Llaneilian and I spent some time taking photos in the churchyard. I have a lovely collection of pics of headstones with Welsh writing now. ;o) This was the bolt on one of the gates of the churchyard which I really liked.



These are the bricks on the inside of an old brick kiln oven at Breakwater Country Park at Holyhead. The quarry made all the bricks for the breakwater in Holyhead harbour and you can walk round the ruins of the buildings.





These are close ups of one of the sculptures at The Dingle in Llangefni. I took lots of photos here, the sculptures were lovely and The Dingle itself is very peaceful.



A disused railway line runs through The Dingle, which is in a wooded valley, and I took lots of pics of the overgrown bridges and railway tracks. I love this one!



This lovely old tree is in the walled garden at Penrhyn Castle.



This rusty, decaying window ironwork was set in a wall along a pathway up to the cliff tops in Bull Bay.

Stencil Graffiti

While we were away on holiday last week I spotted some stencil graffiti as we were driving through a forest park:



Hardly cutting edge but quite sweet and gentle I thought. ;o) I got some very odd looks from folk driving by as I took photos! DH didn't understand what it meant until I explained that the fairies use the speed bump as their tunnel to cross the road safely! ;oD

Necklace

I also made a necklace this morning. It's for a good friend of mine who is currently in Australia and feeling very home sick. ;o( She's having a tough time and I hope this will cheer her a little. My digital camera won't do close ups very well and I just can't get it to sit nicely on the scanner, disobedient little thing! So, not a brilliant pic! Roll on the advent of my new digital camera!

ATCs

I'm once again playing catch up on overdue swap commitments after my week away and these are two ATCs for a "getting to know you" swap on the Unlimited Textiles Yahoo group. The deal is to make ATCs that show your style. Since I don't really have a textile style I've plumped for metal, naturally! Not sure what the recipients will make of them especially if they're expecting something in fabric! ;oD The background is a mustard tin that I had knocking about. I chopped it up and sanded it a bit, you know how I can't be doing with bright and shiny! LOL The two lower copper discs on the first ATC are from my experiments with the salt & vinegar crisps technique in Metalcraft Discovery Workshop. I joined the group because I'd like to experiment with using fabric more in my artwork. While I was making these ATCs I was thinking about combining fabric and metal in some pieces, looking forward to a play in that direction!

Studio Tour!

After my recent decluttering/reorganising/tidying mission in my newly christened studio (formerly known as my craft room or my art room or just my room!) I took some photos while it's looking pristine (well, as pristine as it gets!) to share on here. So, here we go with the guided tour!



Ok, so, here we are looking at the back of the door! Ooh, how exciting I hear you cry! The bookcase came from Ikea's casualty bay and fitted the gap behind the door perfectly. It's way overloaded, of course, and is one of the sections I still need to declutter. Mr S put hooks and a magnetic board on the side to make the most of the space. ;o)



This area is all new! Until Monday it was just a massive heap! The little table was where it is now but was piled SO high it was an amazing feat of engineering! LOL The racking used to be in the room in a different position and has enjoyed a sojourn in the spare bedroom before it's return. The creation of another workspace at the little table means I have more room to have different pieces out on the go and also that I can have arty friends over to play! :oD



This is my main workspace. As the windows of our house are so small it was the only place for me to have my desk really if I wanted any natural light. I love sitting in front of the window listening to the birds and feeling the breeze as I tinker about. ;o)



This is one of the 1960s kitchen larder cupboards that we bought earlier this year. We actually bought one but the owner offered us two smaller ones so we took all three. My in-laws had a very similar one which they used up until they moved house in the early 1990s when, horror of horrors, it went in a skip! I wasn't into vintage at the time, if only I had been! Anyway. it's very roomy and has masses of stuff crammed into it! The heap on the floor is some of the (mostly) metal goods that came from my late FIL's sheds. I want to work on pieces incorporating this stuff so it's out where I can see it and think about potential pieces. The chest of drawers on the right is really quite flimsy and the drawers are groaning somewhat! :oD I think this may be replaced for a stronger beast at some point in the future!



Moving on, we have my two vintage filing cabinets gleaned from Freecycle. Again, very capacious and crammed with all manner of goodies! The map drawers on top of the cabinets were being thrown out at Mr S's workplace so he brought them home for me, knowing how much I'd love them! One of the drawers holds my rubber stamp collection, just! The cupboard on the wall was a car boot find. I think it had a previous life in some sort of medical capacity. It's not very deep but has lots of narrow shelves. I'd like to change the curtains for something a bit jazzier at some point. And there you have it, to the right of this pic we're back to where we started with the door.

Sketch

I've come to the decision that I REALLY need to get back to some regular drawing! :oD This is a pen sketch I did at the beach yesterday afternoon. I added some watercolour tonight but it didn't really perk it up much! LOL

New Skill

My lovely husband has finally given me some instructions on soldering and this evening I made these little babies:



Well, I say made, they're vintage fuses and I've just soldered the loops to the top. Some of them are destined for a piece I'm working on inspired by my recent back problem and I feel some earrings coming on too! Oh, happy day! I do love learning something new! :o)

Background Technique

After coming up with the background for the art journal spread in my previous post I decided to have a play with what I'd done and see if I could recreate the look or whether it was a fluke! :oD I'm sure I haven't invented a new technique here but here's what I did, start with glossy card, a stack of Staz-On ink pads and some different plastic foils (like Tonertex). I got a good layer of one colour of Staz-On over the card and then, while the ink was still wet, I slapped the foil down. When I removed it some of the metallic foil had stuck to the wet ink. I then just continued in the same vein, alternating layers of Staz-On and foil. As it involves foil (which bounces off the light when scanned) these scans don't quite capture the delicious nature of the colours but here they are:

Journal Spreads

I've spent much of today at my friend Becky's place having some arty time together. :o) This is my spread in a travel/holidays themed art journal for the Yahoo group Travelling Journals.



Although I've never been there I chose Australia for my spread. I would love to go there and also to New Zealand one day. This is supposed to be Aboriginal-esque! The spread is upside down in the journal, of course! After I'd stamped Australia in the box with the middle three letters upside down it dawned on me that, for anyone going through the journal the right way up, TRA spells ART! Wish I could claim that I did it with intention but alas I can't! LOL

Another project I'm working on via the Travelling Journals group is a journal swap where players work in a journal for a month and then send their journal to another player for them to keep. This is my favourite spread so far in the journal I'm working in. Annoyingly, the book I've chosen to use, is just a tad too long for my scanner! I love the background I made for this spread so wanted to keep alot of it visible!



Now, onward to arty play time at my friend Skippy's this evening!

Stencilling

Everywhere I go in blog land I seem to come across stencilling and I've been hankering to jump on the bandwagon so today I bought a couple of cans of spray paint from a pound shop and this evening I had a play with them out in the garden. This is some of my experimenting:



It was great fun and I can see why it has an addictive reputation! LOL I also had a play with some stencils in an art journal I'm working in at the moment. I'll post some pics of that when I've finished the spreads I'm working on. If you haven't tried it yet then I can highly recommend it!

Art Journal Spread

Haven't had much time for arty matters this last week or so on account of a rotten cold that knocked me for six but here's an art journal spread from just before the germs arrived:

A bit of old rusty tin!

Yep, a bit of rusty old tin, that's exactly what I'm sharing with you:



I picked this up as I walked up to meet M & E at dog agility this evening. See, to me, this is a rather gorgeous artefact that will be incorporated into a piece of artwork but to you, maybe, it's a rusty cigar tin lid worthy only of being thrown away! So, which is it to you?? Silly though this may sound, I look at this tin lid and I know that leaving my job is the right move! What say you??

AB Spread

This is my spread in an Alice in Wonderland altered book in the children's literature RR I'm taking part in. It's not a brilliant picture as I had to photograph it instead of scanning. I really enjoyed doing this although I'm sure everyone after me will curse at the 3D nature of the spread when they're trying to work on their spreads!

A few more spreads in my art journal. When I saw the donkey pic from a children's book illustration I just had to do a Shrek inspired spread! My daughter and I quote that line from the film all the time!

Metal Goodies

I thought I would share a pic of some of the goodies I've salvaged from FIL's sheds for arty purposes! This is a fraction of what we've brought home - FIL was an inveterate collector/salvager/recycler and his sheds have been a treasure trove for me. I'm not sure quite what he'd make of it all though, bless him!



The patch of dark on the left is a mass of Blakies - who remembers those? - all different shapes and sizes, they're going to be great to use. FIL had oiled them all to prevent them rusting so they had to have a good soapy wash! I adore copper and there's lots of it in different forms - sheet, nails, locks, wire of varying thicknesses, allsorts! The keys have the most beautiful verdigris on them. :o) I also have a collection of tins, different sizes and in varying degrees of condition which I can't wait to use. Any artwork I make with these items will, for me, be a fitting tribute to my FIL's tenacity.

Art Journal Spreads

Whilst doing battle with back pain this past week I have at least managed to spend some time working on spreads in my art journal and in lieu of anything else to share here they are! I won't go into lengthy explanations about any of them (my pain threshold for sitting at the pc is about to reach it's limit!), so if you have any burning questions feel free to ask!