Cath Sheard Art

Tag: process

  • Mark making and working loose

    Yep, more in the “working loose and having fun” series. It feels so good to be back to mark making – something we explored extensively in the first year of my art course, must be five years back now. I studied with the Learning Connexion here in New Zealand, extramurally, for four years. In the end I completed an Advanced Diploma of Art & Creativity (Honours). It felt like such an achievement, and really pushed me to learn new things. Anyway…

    Having moved away from mark making to all kinds of other processes, I have come full circle. And yet I am not back where I started from. I am back to the same technique, but with a very different end result, and am loving it. I regularly check Katherine Tyrrell’s blog Making a Mark here; she writes in depth about mark making and has great links to blogs of interest.

    So expect to see a bit more of this style for now, especially as Katherine Tyrrell’s recent post on working in series really got me thinking about working more consistently on one theme. Mark making – like coming home after a long day at work, it just feels good.

  • More circles

    Just continuing on with mark making and abstraction. On a 4×4″ canvas – loving this size.

  • Playing “what if?”

    A good photocopier is a wonderful tool for artists. I have some photos of the moon, seen through long grass, that I use over and over again. Every now and then I spend some time and money playing with our work photocopier. At only $1 for a colour copy, it’s a bargain.

    Playing with the photocopier means thinking about things like; how would this look as a negative? With the saturation turned right up? With the green turned right down?  Black and white with very high contrast?

    Recently I copied a dozen pages of the same three photos. This picture is just one photo of the three on a page – so for only $12 I have 36 reference images. Cool, I hear you say, but why not just mess round in Photoshop?  Well, I do that too, but there’s something about seeing the immediate result come out of the copier, and then adjusting my choices accordingly, that is more satisfying and useful to me than only seeing the image on screen.

  • Chic, but not yet finished…

    I have been working on more paint ‘n collage wee canvases. This one is not finished yet. It is too simple but I am not sure yet what else to do. Perhaps I need to add some sparkle, or gold brads or something! So I am putting it away for the night to dwell on the possibilities.

  • Brushes…

    The other day I commented that I don’t use brushes often, and that’s certainly true. But it doesn’t mean I never use a brush, and it sure doesn’t mean I don’t own any. I own heaps in fact! I was lucky enough to buy a huge bundle of beautiful ones when an artists’ house was being cleared out. Here’s a bowl of them that sit on my desk.

    Basket of brushes

    I use brushes mainly for mark making towards the end of the painting process, now that I think about it. Most of the paint goes on with paper towels and baby wipes, and brush marks tend to come last, adding highlights here and there. I keep a small bucket of water beside me as I paint and the dirty brushes get dropped in the bucket as I go, so that clean up at the end of the day is quick and easy.