Cath Sheard Art

Tag: relax

  • Making a new art journal

    I’ve been converting an A5 notebook into an art journal for the coming year. I usually have more than one art journal on the go. This one’s role is to encourage me to draw more often, and make notes of ideas as they flash though my brain. I coated all the pages with gesso, and have spent a few afternoons painting, inking and stenciling to get rid of much of the whiteness. I’m nearly finished and the process has been very therapeutic as I mourn the loss of Mum, and incredibly messy. I can’t wait to start gluing bits and bobs into it, drawing on top of the paint, and generally just using it – not storing it, putting it on the bookcase and leaving it there or making it too precious to use.

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  • Sick of the weather

    I’m tired, stressed, upset, and sick of the weather as well. Hence the angry red sky and summer snowfall.

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  • Pulling prints

    Reading Martha’s recent posts about her experiments with Gelli Plates did two things; it rekindled my interest in print making, and it encouraged me to buy a Gelli Plate. Tony is working in Wanganui today on the ambulance, and left at 5.45 so I have had all day on my own. My sister Ailsa and nephew Rowan arrived on Friday to visit Mum, but left at 11am this morning. Incidentally, Mum was delighted to see Rowan and knew who he was almost straight away. On the other hand she thought the wool scarf I was carrying was our dog, Faith. Go figure!

    Anyway…I did a bit of work that needed seeing to, did the washing and the dishes and so on, then out with the Gelli Plate and some Golden Fluid Acrylics, plus some stencils I had cut a while back, and some scraps of corrugated cardboard. I do seem to have a thing for hearts, stars and the stripes corrugated cardboard make at the moment.  I love combinations of teal, bright yellow, deep blue and bright green so thought I’d start with those. I got mixed results, partly because initially I didn’t think to mark where the Gelli Plate sat, so my registration was way off. These are not finished – I’ll probably work over the top of these by hand, adding text and more marks, but I think I’m going to love my new way of making prints. Thanks Martha!

  • In the middle of the muddle

    In my last post I mentioned that I need to make 20 A4 size mixed media pieces for a Pecha Kucha presentation I’m doing at the LIANZA Conference in late September. I’m almost at the half way mark and having a great time. I’ve stencilled, stamped, painted, weaved paper, cut, glued, ripped … and, as usually happens, I forgot to put gloves on before I got started. Here’s the evidence:

     

  • Crusade #45 – back to back

    Michelle’s challenge this month over the GPP Street Team site was to make colour copies of the backgrounds we scraped together last month, and finish them a few different ways. Today was a rare day for me; aside from the washing, there was *nothing* I needed to do. No paperwork, no artwork due, no anything!

    So, I did a pile of colour copies, grabbed some supplies and ripped into it. I used stencils, Sharpies, transparencies, foam stamps, bubble wrap stamping, hand writing, collage, stickers. With some of the pages I then re-scanned and added text in Photoshop.

    All up, I did around 20 pages. Here are a few that I particularly like (I’m showing a couple of the original backgrounds too). In some of them not all of the writing is visible. This is because some of them became like journal pages as I worked and the messages on them feel reasonably personal given that I’m quite introverted. If you can read it all, go for it. If you can’t, never mind!

    As always, thanks so much for the inspiration Michelle. If you enjoy looking at these, you’ll find links to other artists who are playing this month on the left hand side of the GPP Street Team home page. And if you want to join in – cool! Can’t wait to see what you create 🙂

     

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    background 2

     

     

    I value diversity

     

     

    My guarded heart

     

     

    Valued tools

     

     

    Painted hands

     

     

    Poppies

     

     

    My hands…