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.
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.
Cath Sheard Art 