Cath Sheard Art

Tag: colour mixing

  • Refilling my art cup

    Every year I do an art course to grow my skills and refill my cup. It’s a nice way to start the year. Last year’s course didn’t work out, because I got overrun with Tony, and never finished it.

    I’ve long admired the work of American artist Marabeth Quin. Recently I found a new YouTuber, Hannah L Harris. She was talking about doing one of Marabeth’s online courses, and it’s one I’d looked at before. Decision made!

    Part of the course involves choosing a colour palette with three colours, plus black and white. Marabeth suggests some colour combinations and I swatched out 6 of them before deciding on one. Doing the swatches made me realise I prefer a palette that includes blue or teal, and provides some light brights.

    The journal I’m using to keep all the information and work in is the new Gordon Harris Mixed Media 220gsm A4 booklet. At $8 for 60 sheets I think they’re excellent value.

  • Practising the basics

    It’s always useful to practice basic skills like colour mixing, composition and mark making. I’ve been slowly coming to the realisation that I’ve lost some of my own style, especially in terms of mark making. There’s a couple of reasons for that, which it’s probably not useful to document.

    How to fix it? De-influencing myself through less time watching other artists online. Looking at other artist’s work is fine but, for me anyway, watching them work is often detrimental unless it’s a specific technique I want to learn.

    The other thing I’m doing is practicing the basics by colour mixing, inspired by Sarah Renae Clark’s Colour Cubes, then doing a small piece in those colours, an idea I got from Denise Love. That said, I’m making a conscious effort to use my brush strokes and my marks to ensure the hand of the artist shows.

  • Going back to go forward

    I’ve talked about this before, but didn’t get any forward momentum … until now.

    My art journals were always a combination of the ‘craft’ side of art journaling that grew out of scrapbooking, and a place to learn about materials and develop ideas. For lots of reasons, they became almost solely product-based; Tim Holtz, Dyan Reaveley and Dina Wakley.

    I miss the part of art journaling that’s internally driven, and know the habit was good for my art practice. Projects such as the tiny squares help, but the scale is limiting.

    I started following Denise Love on YT recently. I like what she creates but I *love* her art practice. After a few weeks of watching, I had an aha moment (no one can accuse me of being a quick thinker!). I ordered a Color Cube from Sarah Renae Clark – I’ve been seeing a lot of artists use them and knew it would help.

    I’ve started two new art journals, both my fav small Dylusions ones, and am doing seperate but connected projects. I’ve set an additional rule that, aside from setting up the colour swatch pages, I can only use my neglected StencilGirl or other stencils. No reaching for my Dina Wakley or Dylusions ones as they’ll take me back to my usual post-scrapbook style again.

    In the first I pick a card then choose two of the colours and swatch them onto pages I’ve prepared with Dylusions stencils or Dina Wakley Stamps so there’s a framework to work in. On the right hand page I do a small piece using just those colours.

    In the second journal I choose a card, and record the six colours on the left hand side then do a small on the right.

    My aim? More practice with colour mixing, developing my mark making, exploring my interests in shapes and composition, and hopefully working looser.

  • Swatching new paints

    I was fortunate to win a lovely set of Liquitex heavy body acrylic paints in a raffle run by TWB Framing & Art Supplies. They’re based in Feilding, have good stock at reasonable prices, and are lovely to deal with.

    I don’t always swatch new paints but thought I’d have a play and see what I could come up with. I’m pleased with the lovely soft greys in particular. Now I just have to remember to use them; I might keep my swatch notebook on my desk for a while.

  • Circling back

    Circling back

    I’ve been learning to draw faces. Today is day 50 of this #100dayproject. I can draw a recognisable face with no real effort now. What I can’t reliably do is convey a specific emotion, but hopefully in the next 50 days that will come.

    I’m also doing #100daysofcollage with Froyle Art and loving it. We’re doing a different colour each week. These are in a small Dylusions journal, so not overly time consuming. I’m using up some of my stash of gelli print and hand printed papers.

    But I’m also circling back to my earliest art journal love, Tim Holtz and Distress. Sometimes I put it away for a bit, but I always come back. I just got some new paper dolls, transparent wings, and some other bits and pieces. Heaven! Thanks to Fiona at Create for having great stock.

    Using my new Tim Holtz supplies, and some Finnabair rub ons.
    The first face I tried, and some of my most recent. Centre top is today one.
    A few recent collages from the series.