Week 9 - It's all coming together nicely!

The northern lights are nearly complete!  I wowed everyone on my course this week by pulling my painting together with the trees in the foreground and the detail in the snow.  I have even amazed myself!  I did the usual trick of sitting too closely to the painting, thinking i was making a mess but was pleasantly surprised when i saw it on the shelf at the end of the class!  It has a lovely glow about it which is what i wanted to achieve and hopefully after next weeks class it will have even more highlights of colour to it and some lovely glowing stars too.  I also learned that the technique i have been using to soften the colours and outlines of my painting by covering the areas with a semiopaque colour with my rag is called scumbling!  I think that might be my new favourite word, it makes me smile!

A lovely snowy image just in time for Christmas!

Christmas Crafts!

Seeing as December is just around the corner, i decided to get my Christmas Decoration craft book out this afternoon and start making some decorations ready to trim the house up!  Here are what i've made so far!  I will take more pics when i've decorated my studio up with them.

Colourful Llandudno

I have given my Llandudno painting the Kuler treatment and picked out the basic colours in the artwork.  The colours work beautifully together!

Colour, Colour, Colour!

I have just discovered a great website for creating colour palettes!  It is also brilliant for finding new combinations of colour too!  The website is called Adobe Kuler and i have my account on there which i will be building up with lots of nice colour combinations.  The site allows you to download colour palettes as an Adobe swatch exchange file so that the colours can be added to your colour palette in Adobe applications.  Here is my first one together with the painting.

I put this board together myself as the site only saves the palette and not the photograph with it.

Week 8. The Northern light get brighter!

There's only a small difference this week but i'm getting there!  I had the rags out again smoothing and blending my glaze to get that transparent, mystical look.  The sky is coming together nicely now and the lights themselves are becoming brighter the more i apply layers of paint.  The trick is to not let my nice clean bright colours become contaminated on the palette or it could dull the whole thing!  I have reflected the mauve colours out of the sky into the snow too, bringing the painting together.  I'm enjoying taking my time over this painting, it's so relaxing and is going to be amazing when finished!

That sun is becoming really bright now and the greens in the lights becoming more vivid.

Wax Attack!

I have had soooo much fun this afternoon trying out this new craze of melting wax crayons to create art!  I kept my step son totally in the dark about what i was doing and it was worth it just to see the surprise and excitement as the wax started to melt!  He instantly wanted to do one of his own, so i gave him a mini canvas to work on and he loved it!  Just look at our wonderful creations below!

This my canvas.  I arranged the colours in a rainbow taking out the blacks and greys and glued them on with my glue gun.  It took 3 packs of 24 crayons to fit along the 20" width of my canvas (I had to dip into a 4th pack to add a few of the colours i liked best!).

I stood my canvas up and put lots of card on the floor to protect it as the wax flies quite a distance once you get going! Once you apply the heat of the hair drier the wax begins to melt and drip down the canvas.

My finished piece of Crayola art!  I love it!  I love the little splash marks amongst all the drips!  The great thing about this is, although lots of people are doing it, every one of them is unique!

This is my step son starting his masterpiece!  Luckily the colours i left out of my canvas are his favourites so he has used the browns and blacks here!

The finished piece!  He is so pleased and proud of it so it is going to take pride and place on his bedroom wall!

Both canvases together!  Just look how different they are!  Brilliant, have a go!

The First Cut

I had a lovely day today walking around the Manchester Art Gallery at a must see exhibition called The First Cut.  It holds the work of 31 contemporary artists who cut, sculpt and manipulate paper into works of art, and it was totally amazing!  I initially went as i knew that some of the works by Rob Ryan were going to be there, but i was totally overwhelmed by the art of all the artists there.  I took a few snaps to share with you so please enjoy.  I would definitely recommend you visit though if you can, the exhibition is on until 27th January 2013!