Cath Sheard Art

Author: Catherine Barker-Sheard

  • #100TinyTreasures

    I was watching random art videos and came across the #100TinyTreasures challenge run by Leslie Stroz. I’ve done plenty of 100 day art challenges in the last but this is a little different. The format is deliberately tiny, specifically paintings, and it’s 100 things in a year. Sounds manageable, right? Do I need another thing to do? No, of course not, but the more you create, the more creative you are!

    I’ve decided on 2.5” square Bristol paper, and have cut a pile so it’s ready to use. My theme is colour combinations and mark making. I’m going to use all my different media – acrylic, ink, water soluble crayon and pencil, charcoal, watercolour.

    I’ve done my first piece using Malachite, Iris and Elephant Dina Wakley Media acrylic paints, with white pastel pencil, and deep blue graphite.

  • Wanderlust Weeks 6, 7 & 8

    Playing catchup with posting these. Week 6 was a modified colour wheel with Shay Michelle. I discovered although turquoise and similar shades are my fav accents colours, I have very few collage papers in that colour range. I need to get out by large gelli plate and fix that!

    Week 7 with LaQuisha Hall was exactly the kind of layout I hoped doing Wanderlust would get me back to. I used to do a lot of this type of art journaling and have become more product driven. This page is about me wanting to be a safe space for people, and wanting my libraries to be a safe space for everyone as the world gets harder to negotiate.

    Week 8 with Claudette Hasenjager was a tricky one, I had to push through the colour wheel exercise, and I’m pleased I did. I discovered I’m incapable of working tidily for too long and struggle to add enough white, and overdo the black. I expected to love the Ruby combinations, but they were a bit dark, while the Rouge were a bit dull, but the DWM Raspberry are perfect. The layout, based on the fav colour wheel, is about speaking out for myself and others, speaking up even if worried, and then going aggravation of my vocal cord injury.

  • What we love vs what inspires

    What we love vs what inspires

    Alan and I went bush for the weekend. I love being out in nature – trees, hills, quiet, no power or cell cover. No other people. Listening to Morepork at night, watching Tui during the day. Bliss!

    I knew Alan would be doing his thing during the day. We both accept I have limited physical capacity some days. I had prepped two small art journals, and took water soluble crayons and pencils, and a few other bits and pieces. The journals are a new brand for me, and turns out the paper isn’t as durable as I like despite being a bit dearer than some of my fav journals. I bought them to try because they were 30% off. I also wish I’d taken actual watercolours, but both those problems are incidental.

    What’s fascinating, as an artist, is while I absolutely love being in the bush it doesn’t inspire me to paint in the way I expect it to. It might just be that I haven’t done enough to loosen up and create the sort of work I like, but I’m also not sure I want to. And yet when I go down South I find the water, and the colours of the Hokitika Gorge, inspire me to create over and over and over.

    What we love, and what inspires us to create, are not necessarily the same thing. Why? I have no idea really, but I’m mulling it over. In the meantime, here’s some samples of the pages I did do…

  • Week 5 – self portrait

    Week 5 – self portrait

    This week’s Wanderlust25 lesson was taught by Shawn Petite, who I’ve followed for years. The project involved journaling, prepping the page with collage papers and ephemera that have meaning to you, and using washes of colour that relate in some way to what you wrote. The last step was a self portrait. I won’t go into all the details with it being a paid course.

    We started by doing a practice colour wheel. I chose to go slightly off the primary colours, and used DWM Lemon, Lapis and Ruby, with DWM Umber and White, and Liquitex Parchment. It’s not a combination I’d tried on a colour wheel before and I like it.

    People who know me well will understand why “voice” is the word I ended up with to summarise my journaling…

    My initial layers, there’s journaling under the collage.
    My colour wheel, complete with a smear thanks to Sabrina’s paw!
    My completed page.

  • What makes a landscape?

    Sometimes I veer off into florals, faces, or other distractions, but my deepest artistic love is the landscape. Memories of the landscape, fragments of the landscape: colours, shapes, shadows, glimpses…

    I’m interested in what makes something read as landscape. Is it the colours? Shapes? The way things are stacked up from land to sky? I’ve been exploring the idea in small 6×6 collages. As with any series, they’re getting looser and more abstract as the series progresses.