Cath Sheard Art

Blog

  • Running kinda late – GPP challenge

    Back in November Michelle’s challenge at the GPP Street Team blog was to explore the properties of gesso, and have a play at making some cool backgrounds. So, it’s almost 2009, and I finally got to it. Running kinda late, but it was fun anyway – and I learnt some new stuff along the way.

    I used some pre-cut watercolour postcards, fluid acrylics, Making Memories foam stamps and Golden gesso. I stamped with gesso then painted over the top, painted them stamped on top with gesso, dribbled ink, rubbed with metallic crayons … and so on. Here’s just one of the backgrounds I now have ready for when I went to send a postcard to say hi to a friend.  

    gpp1-001

  • Art eyes

    Art eyes. Do you know them? They’re the slight red-rimmed, tired looking ones that have read too many art books, stared at too many lines, spent too long poring over paints and crayons and pens. But it was worth it! I have had a day and a half of ‘mucking round’ with no real purpose in mind, just fiddling about getting all inspired. Lovely fun. Now my poor old eyes need a rest…so it must be time to go cook dinner.

    Mind you, if I wore my reading glasses, instead of letting them sit idle on my desk it might help. I am very short sighted, so my glasses go on before I even get out of bed. Having worn glasses for 36 years I am finding it hard to get into the habit of taking them off in favour of my reading ones. But it is becoming crucial. Sometimes I find myself looking under my glasses to do close work, or moving text further away from me. Perhaps tomorrow I will remember to use them. Or perhaps not 😉

    tired-eyes1

  • It’s the 25th of December, so…

    Whatever you believe, and however you choose to celebrate, I hope you have a lovely peaceful day. With no children in the house it is hard to get too carried away, but we’ll be phoning family later on to see how their day is going. We’re just pottering round the house and then having a roast chicken for dinner. We’ll swap presents late afternoon and that’s about it really. Because it is a week day, Tony is on ambulance duty as normal, so let’s hope it is uneventful…

    Merry Christmas

     

  • Quick family interlude

     

    tony-0021We interrupt this blog to bring you – family photos. Tony recently went to a medieval themed dinner for St John’s and received an award for 9 years of service. He hired a Friar Tuck costume and had a good evening with his fellow volunteers. And our grandson Rory attended his first Playcentre Christmas party, and had a lovely time playing with his friends.13-dec-08-sany0145-3

  • Work in progress – rose

    It’s not often I do anything that involves lots of layers of glazing, but I thought it was time to do something different, something a little slower. Have you read about slow food, slow cloth, slow whatever? It’s all about taking your time, savouring the process, using your process like meditation. That’s what this painting is like for me; a slow, meditative process where I put some glazed colour on, look and think, put some more on, look and think…

    I decided to paint a close-up of a rose because it gives me quite distinct areas of tone and colour, and because the definite form means I hopefully won’t drift off into abstract land on this one. I found a free photo of a rose on the net and printed it out.  I covered the back in pastel, taped it to my canvas and then used a sharp pencil to transfer the main lines onto my canvas.

    I have done quite a few layers so far and, at this stage, it looks very crude and altogether too ‘obvious’ for my liking. But as I go through the layers I will soften both the edges and the colors. Hopefully I’ll arrive at something I can enjoy. We’ll see!

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